


The Price of Magic

by Cynder2013



Series: Sisters by the Styx [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, POV Multiple, POV Third Person, The Prophecy of Seven Went Differently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 42,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23974246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynder2013/pseuds/Cynder2013
Summary: Hades has tasked his children with destroying Voldemort's Horcruxes during Harry Potter's fifth year at Hogwarts, which should be easy enough, by demigod standards. But when the Wizarding World starts encroaching on their demigod lives their quest becomes a lot harder. After all, who wants to be nice to someone who plans to use them as cannon fodder?(Originally started in August 2015.)
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Daphne Greengrass/Original Female Character(s), Hazel Levesque/Frank Zhang, Jason Grace/Piper McLean, Leo Valdez/Sapphire Banks (PJO/HoO OC)
Series: Sisters by the Styx [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719322
Comments: 21
Kudos: 23





	1. Nico I

There were six demigods on the Hogwarts Express. Two of them were girls who looked almost exactly alike. They had the same curly black hair, brown eyes, and brown skin as one of the four boys. That boy was their older brother, even though technically they were all the same age of sixteen. One of the other boys was also sixteen. He was Chinese with the tanned skin that came from spending a whole summer outside. The final two boys were both nineteen and going to Hogwarts as staff assistants, not students. One of them was a freckled, dark-haired, blue-eyed boy with a large nose. The other was a brown-skinned, brown-haired, hazel-eyed boy with ears whose tips sat exceptionally close to the sides of his head. They all sat in the same compartment. One of the girls spoke in Latin and the rest of them spoke in Ancient Greek but they understood each other perfectly. The other girl was holding a notebook and crossing stuff off a list with a pen as they talked. A striped cat was curled up in her lap.

 _“We don’t have to worry about the diary because that was destroyed four years ago,”_ the Chinese boy said. _“What else is there?”_

 _“The locket, the ring, the diadem, the cup, that gods-dammed snake and The-Boy-That-We-Hopefully-Won’t-Have-To-Murder,”_ the girl with the list replied. _“Come on Ed, you’ve read the books as often as I have.”_

 _“I liked_ Percy Jackson and the Olympians _way more,”_ Ed argued. _“You can’t expect me to have memorized all of Voldemort’s Horcruxes.”_

 _“Can we just figure out how we’re going to get the things and destroy them?”_ the other sixteen-year-old boy asked. _“It would be nice to get rid of these disguises quickly.”_ That boy was Nico di Angelo, the son of Hades, who would be going by the name of Nico Levesque while they were at Hogwarts. The two girls were his half sisters, Hazel Levesque and Sapphire Banks, who would also be using the last name Levesque. Why? They just were. Hazel was the only one of the group who wouldn’t be changing her name. The others were Ed Newton, son of Hermes, Will Solace, son of Apollo, and Leo Valdez, son of Hephaestus. The disguises they were wearing had been made by Mike Morgan, who was a son of Hecate and sort of possibly Ed’s boyfriend.

Demigod relationships were complicated.

 _“Hey, just cause you’re having trouble figuring out who’s who…”_ Will elbowed Nico with a wide grin. _“Lighten up di Angelo, we’re going to a school for magic. What could be cooler than that?”_

 _“Bunker Nine,”_ Leo said.

 _“Bunker Four,”_ Sapphire said at the same time as her boyfriend. They tried to glare at each other but ended up laughing instead. Nico had no idea how that had happened.

 _“Okay,”_ he said after they had stopped laughing, _“back to how we’re going to find evil soul containers hidden all over Great Britain.”_

 _“Leo and Will will look for the Room of Requirement,”_ Sapphire decided. She looked at the two older boys. _“You should have more time for that since you only have one ‘class’ each.”_

 _“That’s the room across from the tapestry of a crazy guy trying to teach trolls ballet, right?”_ Leo asked.

Sapphire nodded. _“I think it’s on the seventh floor but I’m not sure.”_ She looked back at her list. _“For the ring, Father gave us the location of the Gaunt shack. Nico, Hazel and I can go there during history class. No one will notice.”_ Nico shook his head. He still couldn’t believe that Hogwarts had a ghost for a teacher. Ghosts outside of either of the Underworlds tended to be very single-minded. He was willing to bet that Professor Binns was teaching the same unit he had been when he died.

 _“Ed, you sent that letter to the goblins, right?”_ Nico asked.

 _“Yup,”_ Ed said.

_“Then some of us have to get into Gryffindor-_

_“Which shouldn’t be too hard.”_ Sapphire commented.

_“-make friends with Potter-“_

_“That’ll be harder.”_

_“-and somehow get an invitation to Twelve Grimmauld Place,”_ Nico finished

 _“That’ll be the hardest part.”_ Sapphire sighed. _“Why did Father have to make this a quest? Why couldn’t he just send one of our siblings who cannot die?”_ Nico and Hazel shrugged.

Leo put his arm around Sapphire’s shoulders. _“At least we’re here to suffer with you!”_

 _“We asked you to come, Flame Boy, you didn’t have to,”_ Sapphire said.

_“That just makes it better!”_

_“No PDA guys,”_ Will said quickly. Leo and Sapphire grinned at him

They decided to leave breaking into the former nest of a Wizarding World basilisk until after they had gotten one of the Horcruxes and possibly attacking Lord Evil-Noselessness until after they had destroyed the other non-living Horcruxes. Hades had been pretty clear about them only having a year before he pulled them out, so they’d have to move fast. Personally, Nico hoped to have this quest over by Christmas.

Sapphire flipped through the notebook. In addition to the list of Horcruxes, which was written in an insane mix of Ancient Greek and Latin that no one but a demigod would be able to read, its pages also held the six letters that they had gotten from Hogwarts that gave them instructions for what to do when they arrived. The instructions were the same for all the letters and they were really simple, but for some reason Sapphire decided to remind them of them.

_“We just have to wait in the entrance hall for Professor Sprout. She’ll be bringing us into the Great Hall after the first years have been Sorted so that we can be Sorted. The staff members that Leo and Will will be working with will find them after the feast.”_

_“Sapphire, we know that already,”_ Ed said. _“Relax a little, okay?”_ Sapphire, Hazel and Nico all looked at him like they thought that he was crazy. They were doing a job for Hades, it wasn’t possible to relax.

 _“I still can’t believe that the_ Harry Potter _books show the future,”_ Sapphire murmured as she put away the notebook.

 _“The author is a legacy of Apollo and Trivia,”_ Hazel pointed out. _“I can’t believe that we’ll have to deal with Umbridge, she sounds horrible!”_

 _“She does get attacked by centaurs,”_ Sapphire said. _“Let’s just try to stay out of her way…while being friends with Harry Potter…We’re sc-”_

 _“The snack cart’s coming,”_ Will interrupted. _“Anyone hungry?”_ There were noises of assent from everyone. The elderly witch pushing the cart came level with the doors.

“Anything off the trolley, dears?” she asked once Will had slid the door open.

Hazel smiled at her. “Yes please ma’am.”

The woman stepped back with her hand over her heart. “Why, you’re Americans!”

“Canadian,” Sapphire and Ed muttered. They were quiet enough that the woman didn’t hear them.

“We’re the exchange students, ma’am,” Will explained. “We’re just here for this year.”

“Oh, that is lovely,” the trolley witch said. “Do enjoy your stay.”

“We hope so, ma’am,” Sapphire said.

The woman began bustling about the cart. “Well, let me show you what we have. I’ll throw in some Bertie Bott's with whatever else you get.” They ended up only buying six Chocolate Frogs, one for each of them, because having six ADHD demigods in a five by four train compartment for hours would be even worse if they were all on a sugar high.

None of them had a problem catching their chocolate when it leaped out of its package. All of them laughed when they saw the card they got.

“Circe!” Nico and Will both exclaimed through barks of laughter. _“I wish I could have seen Percy as a guinea pig!”_

“Medea!” Leo said incredulously. “That’s someone’s idea of a bad joke.” Sapphire grinned apologetically and showed him that she had gotten the same card. “A _very_ bad joke,” Leo corrected.

“Nice hair though,” Sapphire pointed out, indicating the witch’s picture on her card. 

“Lady Hecate,” Hazel said. “With her polecat. _Remember how stinky the ship was?”_ Nico nodded. Hecate’s polecat had some serious intestinal problems. 

“Se-Osiris,” Ed said. “Definitely an Egyptian. Cleo was talking about him. Not someone you want to go up against in a magical duel.”

They ate the chocolates slowly. Nico savoured the taste of a food that wasn’t allowed at Camp Half-Blood and was insanely expensive to buy from the Hermes cabin. Then they began playing what was basically a game of Russian roulette with the jellybeans that the woman had given them. One of them would take two beans from the box and offer them to anyone else. The other person then had to eat one of the beans. Simple. Nico nearly choked on a dirt-flavoured one and no one protested when he spat a dandelion-flavoured one out the window.

They threw on their wizard robes when the train began to slow down. Jay, Sapphire’s cat, refused to be separated from them and stubbornly sat on Nico’s head while they made their way off the train.

“Why is it always my head?” Nico asked the cat. His head had gotten covered in scratches that summer when Jay used it as a refuge to escape from a pack of wild dogs (long story). Jay just meowed at him.

When they got to the carriages they all stopped and stared at the thestrals pulling them. Ed and Sapphire had warned them about the skeletal winged horses that could only be seen by people who had seen someone die, but it was a different thing to actually see them.

 _“Sometimes I hate being a demigod,”_ Will said, drawing strange looks from the students around them.

 _“I hear you,”_ Leo agreed. “Let’s find a carriage.”

They chose a carriage at the end of the line and approached it carefully. They didn’t know how the thestrals would react to them. They didn’t ever think that the creatures would bow.

 _‘Greetings, lord,’_ one of them said.

Nico jumped. _“Did you hear that?”_ he asked the others.

 _“Hear what?”_ Sapphire asked in reply.

 _“I think the thestral talked to me,”_ Nico said. _“Maybe I’m just going crazy.”_

 _“Hey, that’s my job!”_ It was a common misconception (they hoped) that children of Hades tended to go mad, with World War Two held up as the main example. They joked about it, because if they didn’t there was too much thinking about if one of them would cause World War Three.

‘ _Do you have any sugar cubes?’_ the other thestral asked.

“I don’t have sugar cubes,” Nico told it. “Please stand up.” The thestrals rose and the demigods quickly got into the carriage, ignoring the stares that they were getting.

“Maybe we should have taken the boats,” Leo joked as the vehicle pulled away from the station.

Both Hazel and Sapphire turned green at the thought. “Definitely not.”


	2. Wizards II

“Who do you think they are, Harry?”

Harry Potter blinked. He hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation that was going on in the carriage. He was still absorbing the fact that he hadn’t been expelled from school and every second expected to wake up and find himself locked in his bedroom at the Dursleys’. “Who are who?” he asked his friend Ron Weasley.

Hermione Granger, the last member of their little trio, shook her head with a sigh. “Honestly, Harry, were you even paying attention?”

“Of course he wasn’t,” said the little blond girl sitting with them. “There were too many nargles.” Luna Lovegood had her nose buried in her copy of _The Quibbler_ and didn’t see Ginny Weasley roll her eyes. “Daddy has a spray for that. I’ll get you some.” That comment fazed the rest of them nearly as much as her promising Harry that he wasn’t mad. 

“Err, thanks, Luna,” Harry said.

“You’re welcome, Harry.”

Their carriage went over a bump. Harry’s glasses rattled on his nose and he put a finger on their nosepiece so that they wouldn’t fall off. “We were talking about the people in the last carriage,” Ron told him. “They’ve never been here before but they’re not first years. And one of the guys was acting really weird.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Weird how?”

“Ronald thinks he was talking to the carriage,” Hermione told him. Harry let out a short laugh. The carriage or the horse things pulling it? Maybe he was going mad.

“He was!” Ron insisted. “The bloke was telling the carriage that he didn’t have sugar cubes!” Hermione shook her head and Ginny rolled her eyes. They had been too far away from the boy for Ron to have heard anything that he said, unless Ron had the ears of a bat. 

The carriage came to a rolling stop. Because of where he was sitting, Harry got out first. He offered his hand to Luna, who took it with a smile and hopped lightly out of the carriage. When Ron attempted to do the same for Hermione she just rolled her eyes and jumped to the ground with Ginny right behind her.

They entered the Great Hall and Ron immediately went and sat down at the Gryffindor table. He looked down at his empty plate. “Do you know what time it is?” he asked Harry.

Harry looked down at his watch. “Seven-thirty.” Ron groaned.

Harry looked around while they waited but he didn’t see anyone he didn’t recognize. Maybe if there were any new students they would come in with the first years, they would have to be Sorted after all. When he looked up at the Head Table his eyes widened.

“What is it?” Hermione asked.

He jerked his head towards the woman wearing a nauseating shade of pink who was assumedly their new Defence teacher. “She was at my hearing!” His friends’ eyes widened.

“Oh,” Hermione said quietly.

“Blimey,” Ron added. “What’s she doing here?” That question didn’t really deserve an answer.

Soon the first years arrived and Professor McGonagall began the Sorting. All of the kids being Sorted were frightened little eleven-year-olds, and Harry wondered if perhaps his friends had been mistaken. After the last first year had been Sorted, Professor Dumbledore stood up behind the golden phoenix podium to great murmuring from the assembled students. The Sorting Hat hadn’t been put away yet and many of them were wondering out loud if McGonagall had finally made a mistake after running the Sorting for so many years.

“Good evening all. I am Professor Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Allow me to bid a warm welcome to all our first year students. And to our old students, welcome back! Before we get started on our delicious feast there is one more matter that must be taken care of.” Here he smiled and the twinkle in his eye could be seen from across the Great Hall. “This year I am proud to announce that we will be hosting six students from North America’s Five Rivers Academy of Magic. Four of them will be attending classes to learn from us and the other two will be working alongside some of our professors to share their knowledge with you! I hope that you will make them welcome.”

Dumbledore began applauding and as the giant entrance doors opened the rest of the hall followed suit. Most of the students were craning their necks so that they could see the American students. Harry looked over at Draco Malfoy first and a grin crossed his face. The blond Slytherin looked like he had swallowed a slug. Finally, Malfoy found out about something important that was happening at the same time as the rest of the school did!

It was a good thing that the feast hadn’t started yet because Ron’s mouth dropped open when the American’s came into view. “Blimey.” Harry looked over the head of Lavender Brown and was able to see the face of one of the American girls. She was looking straight at him. Her dark eyes burned through the air between them and Harry ended up looking away until the group had reached the stage. All of them were wearing Muggle clothes, which made them look even more out of place than if they had come wearing their school’s uniform. One of the boys had something that looked like a tool belt around his waist and the girl standing beside him was wearing black gloves. Another boy, for no obvious reason, had a cat on his head. 

McGonagall unrolled another parchment scroll. “Fletcher, Will!” she called. A dark-haired boy who looked like he was wearing a fake nose stepped away from the group and sat down on the stool. His knees were almost up to his chin and he looked rather silly sitting there with the Sorting Hat perched on his head. The entire hall waited.

“HUFFLEPUFF!” the Hat shouted. The Hufflepuff table burst into applause. Will gave the other Americans a bright smile as he went to sit with his new House.

“Levesque, Hazel!” One of the girls went to have the Hat placed on her head. Harry was pretty sure that she wasn’t the one who had stared at him even though the two of them looked identical. 

“GRYFFINDOR!” the Hat decided. Hazel handed it back to Professor McGonagall and sat down next to Fay Dunbar, who had moved over on the bench to make room for her. Fay smiled at the girl and Hazel smiled back.

“Levesque, Nico!” was next and like the first Levesque he was Sorted into Gryffindor. His Sorting took the longest so far, but only because he had to dislodge the cat from the top of his head so that he could put the Hat on. He sat down beside Nearly-Headless Nick, to whom he gave a nod that was returned with wobbly acknowledgment.

Professor McGonagall looked down at her scroll. “Levesque, Sapphire!” she said, sounding only slightly unsure of herself. Had Five Rivers Academy really sent three students who were all related? That didn’t seem fair to their other students. Hogwarts was one of the greatest wizarding schools in the world; more than three families should have gotten the chance to experience it. 

The gloved girl sat down and put on the Sorting Hat. They had to wait for a while but eventually the Hat shouted “SLYTHERIN!” and they could begin to clap slowly or not at all. Ron was one of those who chose not to clap. Even the Slytherins didn’t seem all that enthusiastic. Sapphire made her way to the Slytherin table and seated herself with the Bloody Baron on one side and the cat that had been seated on Nico’s head on the other. She also exchanged a nod with the ghost and then turned to watch the rest of the Sorting.

“Mason, Leo!” McGonagall said after she had finished glaring around the hall. The boy wearing a tool belt stepped forwards. He tapped a leg of the stool with, was that a hammer? And waited.

“GRYFFINDOR!” Leo flashed a peace sign to the Slytherin table with a lopsided smile and went to sit down beside Nico, who punched him in the shoulder. 

“Zhang, Edgar!” became a Slytherin to the same reception as Sapphire and then the Sorting was finally done. The Hat and its stool were put away and food appeared on the tables. As usual, the meal was delicious but the American students didn’t seem to be enjoying it. Will was yawning more than he was eating, the three American Gryffindors were slowly working their way through the smallest possible portions of the plainest food, over at the Slytherin table the cat was eating more than the two wizards, and none of them even had pudding. 

When the demolished piles of desserts had vanished from the plates, Dumbledore rose again. “Now that you are all fed and watered, I have a few announcements to make. First of all, Argus Filch has asked me to remind you for what he says is the four-hundred-and-sixty-second time that the use of magic in the corridors between classes is expressly banned. He has also recently attached the full list of items forbidden at Hogwarts to his office door and encourages all students to read it fully.” That would never happen. “We are also welcoming a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher this year. Please give a warm welcome to Professor Dolores Umbridge, who has been sent to us by the Ministry of Magic.”

Under the cover of applause Ron whispered, “How much do you want to bet that the school couldn’t find anyone to take the job?”

Harry laughed. “Who do you think I am? Crabbe? I’m not stupid enough to take that bet.” Hermione shushed them, though all their classmates were whispering among themselves anyway. 

When the applause died down and the whispering stopped, Dumbledore began speaking again. Umbridge made small, simpering coughing noises but he ignored her and was soon forced to stop when Professor Sprout offered her a lozenge. 

“I would also like to let you know of an opportunity that will be coming up for all students in fourth year and above. This summer our school will be travelling to a summer camp in New York run by a group of magical beings.” There was a thump and everyone turned to look at Edgar, who had fallen off of the bench.

“I’m fine,” he said as he scrambled back into his seat, his face pale.

Dumbledore looked at him with concern, but then he nodded and continued. “The trip will be paid for by Hogwarts and there will be many learning opportunities so I encourage any of you who are interested to sign up for the information session that will be happening next week. A sign-up sheet will be posted in all common rooms and I hope that many of you will attend.”

Hermione nodded. She would obviously be going and Harry and Ron would probably get dragged with her.

“That will be all for tonight,” Dumbledore said. “Prefects, please escort your first years to your common rooms. I bid you all a good night!”

The four groups of sleepy, relaxed first years were the first out of the Hall, followed closely by four of the six American students. McGonagall approached Will and Leo and ushered them out of a side door that Harry at least was quite sure he hadn’t seen before.

“Let’s go,” Ron yawned. The three of them headed up to their dormitories. When Ron and Harry entered their room they found themselves in the middle of a loud and heated discussion between Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, and Nico Levesque. Their last roommate, Neville Longbottom, was sitting on his bed with wide eyes looking like he rather be anywhere else.

“Oy, what’s going on?” Ron shouted. “Some people are trying to sleep already, you know?” The three boys looked at him.

Nico’s face was red and his eyes flashed dangerously. He spoke through gritted teeth. “I will tell all of you right now, stay away from my sisters or else.” He glared at each of them and Harry had to stop himself from taking out his wand.

“Whatever you say, mate,” Ron said shakily. “Why are you in here anyway?”

“The sixth year boys’ dorm is full. Don’t worry, I don’t have classes with you.” Nico sent one last glare around the room and then flopped down on his bed, drawing the curtains tightly. The other boys looked at each other. Seamus twirled his pointer finger around his temple. Dean just shook his head. All of them began getting ready for bed.

A not dissimilar conversation was taking place in the dormitory of the fifth year girls. Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil were giggling with each other and Hermione was rolling her eyes at them when Fay led Hazel into the room.

“Did you see his muscles?” Parvati giggled.

“So hot,” Lavender agreed. “Do you think we could make a long distance relationship work?”

“Totally. Wouldn’t we look great together?”

“Yes!”

Fay turned towards Hermione, who had given up on their roommates and was reading _Hogwarts: A History_ for perhaps the thousandth time. “Who are they talking about?”

Hermione replied without looking up. “Nico Levesque and Edgar Zhang.”

For some reason Hazel began laughing. Lavender and Parvati stopped squealing and looked at her with eyebrows raised. “What is it?” Lavender asked.

Hazel struggled to force out a complete sentence. “Sorry to disappoint you, but both of them are spoken for.” She seemed to find this extremely funny and collapsed, giggling, on the new bed that had been moved into their dorm. Hermione and Fay looked at each other, confused as to what could be so funny about the two boys already having girlfriends, while Lavender and Parvati looked disappointed.

“Leo is kind of cute,” Parvati offered after a few moments. This statement sent Hazel tumbling back into a fit of giggles and thus left Fay wondering if all Americans were so odd.


	3. Sapphire III

Time differences plus Camp Half-Blood’s usual wake-up call time could only ever have equalled the six demigods going down to the Great Hall at the same time as the teachers. Professor Snape was glaring at them as they gathered at the far end of the Hufflepuff table. There wasn’t any food on the house tables when they got there, they hadn’t expected that there would be, but a few moments after Nico and Hazel arrived a bowl of oatmeal appeared in front of each of them followed by a spoon and a small plate of fruit.

 _“I think the house-elves are psychic,”_ Sapphire murmured, picking up a strawberry.

“What?” Will asked.

Sapphire bit into the berry and made a face at how sour it was. Sour compared to camp strawberries anyway. She was getting spoiled. “Hmm?” she said to Will.

“You have to speak English, Aimi,” Leo said. “None of us understand Mandarin.”

She swallowed. “Oh.” She had been sure that she was speaking English. “I said that I think that the house-elves are psychic.”

“Or they’re just really prepared,” Ed suggested. “Could you please pass the milk?” Nico handed the jug across the table and Ed proceeded to drown his oatmeal before dumping some blueberries on top of it. Sapphire flinched. She should not be thinking about drowning.

“So, what are we doing today?” Hazel asked once everyone had woken up enough to know what language they were speaking in.

“I think we’re getting our schedules.” Sapphire looked to Leo and Will, who were the only ones who had talked to Professor McGonagall. They nodded. She looked briefly around the hall. It was still practically empty.

 _‘We are going to be here for a long time,’_ Jay said. Sapphire had to agree with her cat.

The hall filled up slowly as students trickled in in small groups. A few of them, like Fay Dunbar from Gryffindor, detoured to greet the demigods before going to their House table.

“Do you think we’ll have to move?” Ed asked, eyeing the group of Slytherins that was glaring at them. Sapphire shrugged with a frown. They hadn’t made the best impression on the Slytherins the night before, a surprise since Ed had ever so thoughtfully added a live snake to their common room, so moving to the Slytherin table would probably be akin to fighting with Clarisse, dangerous and painful.

“I hope not.” Sapphire pulled Jay away from the platter of bacon that had appeared on the table and began petting him with one hand. Leo put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned towards him gratefully.

“So what happened with the Slytherins?” he asked as he bent a copper wire into a 3D snake.

Sapphire grimaced. “The common room is under the lake.”

Nico and Hazel flinched. “Good thing Uncle P likes you,” Nico said. Hazel nodded in agreement with their brother, colour beginning to return to her cheeks.

“And we got schist from a blond ferret for not being pure-bloods,” Sapphire continued. Jay hissed quietly. He was still upset that Sapphire hadn’t let him so much as use Malfoy’s leg for a scratching post. “He said, what was it,’Mudblood bitches should be drowned at birth’? Then Ed turned him into a rat snake.”

Everyone at the Hufflepuff table who was within earshot looked at Ed, who tried to disappear into his seat. “It was as close as I could get to a rat,” he muttered.

 _‘I would have liked a rat better,’_ Jay grumbled.

“What about you guys?” Sapphire asked. Hazel grinned. She told them about how two of her roommates had been discussing their appreciation of Nico and Ed and had eventually moved on to Leo when they found out that they were unavailable. The three boys blushed. Will hid his laughter in a bite of an apple. Sapphire giggled and kissed her boyfriend on the cheek.

Will began enthusiastically describing the rooms that he and Leo had been given. While he was telling them what type of stone was used in the fireplace, Professor McGonagall and the other House heads began handing out class schedules. Snape scowled when he had to walk all the way to the Hufflepuff table to give Ed and Sapphire theirs but he didn’t give them detention or take away points. In fact he didn’t say a word. Either they were exempt from his full wrath because they were in his House or Dumbledore had told him to be nice to their guests.

Sapphire had Arithmancy and Muggle Studies as her electives as well as an extra free period for her “Correspondence Course in Advance Runic Studies”, which was code for “working on Egyptian magic with stuff that Sean Edgley and the Kanes are going to send through Lacy”. Ed’s schedule was the same. Nico and Hazel were taking Muggle Studies but had opted for Divination instead of Arithmancy because demigod dyslexia was murder on the order of anything written. It would be hard to find the horcrux in the castle if the castle got blown up.

“We’ve got Muggle Studies together,” Sapphire noted. “And Herbology, and Charms, and Potions, big surprise…”

“Good morning, Mister Levesque.”

Sapphire looked up and saw Dumbledore standing behind Nico.

“Miss Levesque,” Dumbledore continued, “Mister Fletcher, Mister Zhang, Miss Levesque, Mister Mason.” Sapphire felt the urge to pour him a glass of water.

“Good morning, Professor,” Leo said with a grin. “What can we do for you?”

Dumbledore smiled warmly and his eyes twinkled. “Mister Ollivander has arrived to weigh your wands. He has to make sure they’re in working order before you begin using them in class. I understand that Mister Zhang has already had a transfiguration incident.”

Ed blushed again.

Will got up from his seat. “Lead the way, Professor.”

Ollivander was waiting in an unused classroom on the second floor. He was vacuuming away dust with his wand when they arrived. “Hello, Dumbledore. I hope you don’t mind that I did a bit of cleaning.”

Dumbledore smiled. “Not at all, Ollivander.”

Ollivander turned his gaze on the demigods. If they hadn’t been used to staring down children of Athena then the man’s sliver eyes would have been extremely unsettling. Since she had survived being glared at by Annabeth, Sapphire only felt a slight shiver go down her back when Ollivander studied her.

“So these are the American students?” he said at last. “Lovely. Where are your wands?”

The answer to that was _everywhere_. With a flick of his wrist, Leo’s wand shot out of the holster he had made for it while they were on the train. Will had his strapped to his upper arm like it was a knife. Ed’s wand was up his sleeve. Nico looked through all the pockets in his jacket before bending down and extracting his wand from his boot. Hazel had her’s in the pocket of her robes, and as a side note she was the only one wearing the uniform. When Sapphire couldn’t find her’s on her person she had to think seriously about whether she’d put it in her shadow before remembering that she’d used it to put her hair up.

Dumbledore did not look impressed, but he introduced each of them to Ollivander before retreating to a corner of the classroom.

Mr. Ollivander held his hand out towards the demigod nearest to him and Hazel handed him her wand hilt first. Ollivander rolled it between his fingers. “Hazel and unicorn tail hair, thirteen inches exactly, quite pliable.” He waved the wand and the desk beside him began floating. “Good for charms. Your wand, Miss Levesque, is in excellent working order.”

“Thank you Mister Ollivander,” Hazel said as she took her wand back. Nico gave his wand to the old wizard, who held it close to his face.

“Pine and dragon heartstring, thirteen inches exactly, unyielding.” After a bit of time he succeeded in causing grey bubbles to pop out of the end of the wand and he handed it back to Nico with a nod.

Will’s willow and unicorn tail hair wand turned a dust bunny into a real bunny that hopped out of the room before it could be changed back. Filch wouldn’t be happy about that. The spruce and dragon heartstring that was Leo’s wand of course had to produce a fireball that barrelled right towards Nico, who ducked just in time. Mr. Ollivander frowned. “I did not mean to do that.” He decided that the wand was alright though, when it followed his intention to turn a desk red.

When Sapphire gave Ollivander her wand he stared at it for almost a full minute before asking her what on earth it was made of.

“Hippo ivory.” Thanks to the fact that it was actually her magician’s wand in a different form. 

“I beg your pardon?” Ollivander said.

“Hippo ivory. No live hippos were harmed in the making of this product.” Sapphire looked at Dumbledore out of the corner of her eye and saw that he had stopped leafing through an old textbook to watch what was happening.

Ollivander rolled her wand between his fingers and held it close to his eyes. “Miss Levesque, I have never in all my years as a wandmaker come across a working wand made of anything other than wood.”

“Try it, sir,” Sapphire said.

Ollivander looked at her skeptically but still turned around and waved her wand at a desk. It immediately began tap-dancing. He cancelled the spell and then made a bunch of flowers burst forth from the wand’s tip.

“Well, it certainly does seem to work.” He gave the wand back to Sapphire and looked at Ed. “Do you have one of those too?”

“Yes, sir.” Ed gave his wand to the wandmaker, who gave it a wave and nodded when it trailed sparks.

“Well, I can’t say that I like them but if they work for you…” He handed the wand back. “Enjoy your time at Hogwarts.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ed said.

Dumbledore put his textbook down. “I will show you out, Ollivander. You six should get to class.”

“Yes, Professor.” The two wizards left the room. The demigods looked at each other.

“That was interesting,” Leo said.

“Very,” Sapphire agreed. “Let’s go blow stuff up.” 


	4. Wizards IV

When Harry entered the common room that night he wasn’t the only one scowling. Defence with Umbridge (christened ‘Umbitch’ by a handful of students) was absolutely horrible, and that would have been without him getting a detention out of it. He looked around the room quickly in case Angelina wanted to yell at him for not being able to make Quidditch tryouts again. Oh, and Trelawney had predicted his death, again. That was another good reason to be mad. He also wasn’t the only one who had their grumpy expression turn to one of mild confusion when they saw Nico Levesque sitting in front of the fire appearing to be reading his Defence textbook with the book turned upside down. Hermione was the only one to ask him what he was doing.

Nico looked over the top, or was that the bottom, of his book when he realized she was talking to him. “What do you mean what am I doing? I’m reading.”

“You’re holding the book upside down,” Hermione said. 

Nico turned the book around and looked at the cover. He blinked. “I didn’t notice. I guess it’s so boring that it doesn’t make a difference.” 

Hermione sat down next to Nico, ignoring Ron’s silent but extremely obvious warnings for her not to. “What are your Defence lessons usually like?”

Nico tilted his head. “We have a lot less reading.” Then he looked at his watch and stood up. “Goodnight, Hermione.” He left the common room while Hermione was blinking with surprise.

“What is it?” Harry asked.

“I never told him my name.” She shook her head and looked up at Ron. “Why didn’t you want me to talk to him?” Ron opened and closed his mouth, dumbstruck.

“Didn’t you hear?” Harry asked for his friend. “It’s the only thing Seamus seems to be able to talk about other than how I’ve lost my marbles.”

“Are you talking about how Nico was defending his sisters when Seamus and Dean were being typical teenage boys?” Hermione crossed her arms when both boys looked at her like she was crazy. “Oh honestly! Neville told me what they were saying and none of it was very nice. You’d have done the same if it had be Ginny two strangers were talking about, Ron.”

Something on the other side of the room exploded and multicolored sparks rained down, setting anything flammable on fire. Hermione whipped out her wand and began putting out the flames with a spell that they probably hadn’t learned yet. If they had, neither Harry nor Ron could remember it.

“Sorry!” Fred and George shouted to the entire common room. Their eyebrows were singed and it would have been obvious just from their shell-shocked looks that they had caused the explosion. “It wasn’t supposed to do that.” Once all the fires were out, everyone in the room went back to whatever they had been doing except for Hazel Levesque, who picked something up off of the floor by the table she had been sitting at, grabbed her books, and practically ran to the girls’ dormitory, leaving Fay Dunbar at the table wearing a look of confusion.

Hermione sat back on the couch once order had been restored and pulled a wad of yarn out of her bag. With a wave of her wand she sent needles working at knitting what looked like a cross between a heavy woolen bladder and something Fang would drag out of the Forest after he had played with it. “What the bloody hell is that?” Ron asked, gapping at the woolen monstrosity with a look of horror.

“It’s an elf hat,” Hermione said.

“That’s a hat?” Harry asked.

Hermione looked at Harry incredulously. “Of course it is! I’ve been making them all summer.”

Harry frowned. “Why?”

“For the house-elves. I put some out last night and they were all gone this morning.” Harry opened his mouth to ask why she was making hats for house-elves before he realized that she was trying to free them. He was pretty sure that leaving clothing lying around for the house-elves to pick up wouldn’t free them, they wouldn’t be able to do the laundry if that were the case, but he wasn’t going to tell Hermione that. She wouldn’t want to believe him.

“You’re still on that spew thing?” Ron asked incredulously.

Hermione looked like she was going to start blowing fire out of her nostrils. “It’s S.P.E.W!”

“I left my Divination stuff in our room,” Harry said quickly. “We should get started on our homework, shouldn’t we, Ron?”

“Er, yeah.” Ron turned towards the stairs. “And we’ve got that essay from Snape to do. They do realize that it’s only the first day of school?” The two of them made their escape, quietly so that they didn’t wake up Nico, who was already asleep.

About ten minutes after getting started on the Potions essay, Harry heard a snuffling sound coming from Ron’s bed. He turned and saw that his friend had fallen asleep with his face buried in his pillow. Harry yawned. Ron had the right idea. It was getting late… _Just a little bit further._

The next morning, after cleaning up the ink that had spilled all over his bedding, Harry went down to the common room and the first thing he saw was the clump of people gathered around the notice board. Hermione had been one of them, but she was turning around and trying to push out of the crowd when Harry made it downstairs. The crowd parted when Harry started walking towards them and Hermione was finally able to escape. “Harry, I signed us up for the information session on Sunday!”

“You did what?” Harry asked.

“The information session for the trip to America,” Hermione said. “I signed you, me, and Ron up for it.”

Harry grimaced. “Hermione, I don’t really want to go—”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Hermione said.

“And I don’t think Dumbledore will let me.”

“Just ask him. It’s bound to be safer in America than it is here, not that Hogwarts isn’t safe just with You-Know-Who and everything.” Hermione shook her head. “Never mind. It wouldn’t hurt to see what it’s all about. Where’s Ron? Is he still asleep?”

Harry shook his head. Ron’s bed had been empty when he woke up. “He might have gone to breakfast already.”

“He would,” Hermione huffed. “Ron is such a…Ron. Come on.” She pushed her way out the portrait hole and Harry followed.

Ron was at breakfast, looking exhausted but still plowing his way through a mountain of food. He looked up as they approached. “Ood ‘orning.”

“Where were you?” Hermione asked.

Ron swallowed. “I, er, went to see if Hagrid was back.”

“Is he?” Harry asked. Ron shook his head and shovelled more scrambled eggs into his mouth.

Professor Grubbly-Plank was waiting for their class by Hagrid’s hut. “I’ve got an easy lesson for you today. We’ll be going to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, so anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable with that can head back up to the castle now.” None of the Gryffindors left, though Parvati and Lavender looked like they were considering it, and when the Slytherins, specifically Malfoy, saw that no one else was moving they just sneered and fell to the back of the group.

Grubbly-Plank led them a short way into the Forbidden Forest where, to their surprise, Will Fletcher was waiting for them having just finished setting up a stone barrier between where the class was standing and where there was raw meat scattered over the ground. “Have they arrived yet?” Grubbly-Plank asked Fletcher. He shook his head.

“Have _what_ arrived?” Malfoy asked loudly. “If there’s something dangerous coming—” Harry, Hermione and Ron shushed him and he glared at them.

“They’re not dangerous now,” Fletcher said.

Malfoy changed to glaring at him. “I wasn’t asking you.”

“Mister Malfoy, Mister Fletcher is a guest in our school and while he is helping me with this class you will treat him with the respect all of your teachers deserve,” Grubbly-Plank said furiously. “And keep your voice down, we don’t want to attract anything else.”

Ron leaned towards Hermione. “What d’you reckon we’re waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” Hermione admitted. “Nothing dangerous, we’re too close to the school.” The Slytherins hoping for a reason to protest grumbled.

After waiting for a few minutes Harry saw something moving through the trees. One blink later and a streak of fur had darted out, snapped up some of the meat, and disappeared back into the trees. “Did you see that?” Hermione shook her head but Ron nodded.

“You’ve seen one of them?” Grubbly-Plank asked.

“I dunno, it was moving too fast. It just looked like a bit of fur,” Harry said.

Grubbly-Plank nodded firmly. “There’ll be more of them soon. I want all of you to get out some parchment so that you can sketch them when they’re feeling more comfortable.”

“What exactly are we going to be drawing?” Pansy Parkinson sneered. “There isn’t anything there.”

“Wolves.” Harry looked at Fletcher, who was staring over the wall that he had built in the direction that Harry had seen the streak of fur disappear.

“Wolves?” Pansy shrieked. “Werewolves!” 

“No, just wolves,” Fletcher assured her. “And they don’t like you screaming like that.”

“How would you—Oh.” Pansy’s terror and indignation melted off her face as a silver wolf walked out of the trees. “Oh, he’s beautiful. Look, Draco!”

Draco sneered. “It’s just an animal.” The wolf looked straight at Malfoy and barked loudly. Malfoy jumped.

More wolves emerged from the trees, shyly at first but soon they were tearing into the meat and playing games like the class wasn’t even there. The class settled down to draw the beautiful creatures and were quite sorry when the period ended. When they left Fletcher was standing by the wall apparently having a conversation with the silver wolf who had been the first to appear. No one was mocking him for it, because the wolf was clearly responding with barks and nods of his head.

That was undoubtedly their easiest class of that week. By the time Harry’s detention with Umbitch, sorry Umbridge, rolled around, he was swimming in homework. “It is our O.W.L year,” Hermione reminded them when he and Ron complained. “They want to make sure we know everything that could be on the exams.”

“Well couldn’t they wait until we’ve actually had lessons on this stuff?” Ron threw down his quill in disgust. “How am I supposed to know how many moons Jupiter has if we haven’t learned it yet?”

“You could open your textbook, Ronald,” Hermione said.

Harry looked at his watch and also put his quill down. “I’ve got my detention now.”

Ron looked up at him with alarm. “The one that you’re missing Quidditch tryouts for?” Harry nodded and Ron hurried to put his things away.

“What’re you doing, mate?” Harry asked

“I’m trying out for Keeper,” Ron said very quickly.

Hermione shrieked. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Ron’s ears turned pink. “I didn’t want you to make a big deal out of it.”

After wishing his friend good luck, Harry climbed out of the portrait hole and headed for Umbridge’s office. When he got there he was surprised to see Nico Levesque waiting outside the door. He hadn’t spoken to the American since the night he arrived.

Nico nodded to him. “You have detention too?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “What’d she get you for?”

“Saying that her lessons were a waste of time and wouldn’t help anyone protect themselves when Voldemort comes calling. You?”

“The…the same,” Harry stuttered. His opinion of the American wizard got one hundred times better.

Nico smirked. “I guess she really doesn’t like it.”

Harry grinned. “No, she doesn’t.”

“Well since we’re both here now, do you want me to knock?” Nico asked.

“Sure.”

Nico knocked loudly on the door and Harry imagined Umbridge jumping at what sounded like her door being broken down.

“Come in!” Umbridge said in a sticky sweet tone.

Nico pushed open the door. Harry couldn’t see his face but he thought the American wizard was trying not to gag. He certainly was when he got his first look at the inside of the office. Hogwarts had gone through a lot of Defence teachers and Harry had gotten to see the office with three different occupants. Lockhart had plastered the walls with photos of himself. While Remus Lupin was the Defence teacher the office was spartan with a better chance of seeing some Dark creature in a tank than any personal touches. Last year, the fake Moody had scattered Dark detectors all over the place and kept a trunk with the real Auror locked inside it.

Umbridge had cats. And doilies. And a hell of a lot of pink. Nico’s reaction made a lot of sense. Always being dressed in black, the American looked like he’d never heard of colour.

“Good, you’re here.” Umbridge looked them over from behind her desk. “Come in, close the door. You’ll be writing lines for me tonight.” Harry closed the door and he and Nico sat in the uncomfortable chairs that had appeared on their side of Umbridge’s desk. Harry began digging through his bag for a quill. “What are you doing, Potter?”

He sat up so quickly that he hit the back of his head on the desk. “Looking for a quill, Professor.”

“Oh no.” Umbridge smiled with sharp little teeth. “You’ll be using one of my _special_ quills.” She opened a drawer and pulled out two black quills with very sharp points. “I want both of you to write ‘I must not tell lies’.”

Harry looked down at the parchment she had pushed at him. It was very long. “How many times?”

Umbridge’s smile grew. “As many times as you need for it to sink in.”

Nico looked at the quill she handed to him. “I’ll use my own quill, thanks. I think Harry will too.”

Umbridge’s face turned pink. “You will do as I say, Mister Levesque. Use this quill.”

Nico put the quill down and crossed his arms. “No.”

“Now, Mister Levesque,” Umbridge said through gritted teeth. “Or I’ll make it six detentions.”

Nico pursed his lips. “Fine.” He pulled out his wand and pointed it at Harry’s quill and then his own, muttering something that sounded like a spell but was far longer than any spell Harry knew. The quills glowed red before going back to normal.

“Mister Levesque, what did you do?” Umbridge demanded.

“Nothing you would disapprove of, Professor.” Nico picked up the quill and began writing. “Get going, Harry. Don’t you want to get out of here?” Harry picked up his quill and poised it over his parchment. He blinked and was about to say that he didn’t have any ink when Nico kicked his ankle. “Write,” he whispered.

Harry wrote.

_I must not tell lies._ The ink that came out of the quill was a bright red, but it seemed to be working just fine so Harry wrote again.

_I must not tell lies._ Umbridge squirmed in her chair and rubbed the backs of her hands.

_I must not tell lies._ _I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies. I must not—_

“Enough!” Umbridge stood up, her hands flat on her desk. Harry saw that the backs of both of her hands were bleeding and had shining words carved into them: I must not tell lies. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it! Get out! Both of you get out!” Harry scrambled to grab his bag as Umbridge began throwing desk ornaments at him and Nico. Nico pushed him out of the office and slammed the door.

“What did you do?” Harry asked, because he was sure that he hadn’t done anything.

Nico looked at him with burning eyes. “Those were Blood Quills. They write with the blood of the person using them. My dad has some, they’re used for signing some types of contracts, but if they’re used repeatedly then they’re considered torture. I just made sure she knows what it feels like.”

“Oh.” Harry’s head spun. “What spell was it that you used?”

“Something my dad taught me. _He_ doesn’t mind kids knowing how to defend themselves.” They walked to the portrait hole in silence. “Mimbulus mimbletonia.”

“You’re early, dears,” the Fat Lady commented as she opened the door.

“Umbridge threw us out,” Harry said.

“Ah. Well, have a good evening.”

“Thank you.” The portrait hole closed behind them. The common room was mostly empty. Hermione looked up from her work when they entered. Knitting needles were flashing in the air beside her.

“You’re early,” Hermione said.

“Yeah.” Harry turned to Nico. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Always happy to help another Arkhamite,” Nico said.

Harry frowned. “A what?”

Nico shook his head. “Never mind. Have a good night, Harry.”

“Hey, Nico,” Nico looked back at him as he was heading towards the table where Fay Dunbar and his sister were sitting. “Do you know how many moons Jupiter has?” Harry had been having trouble with that question too.

Nico smiled. “Sixty-seven.”

“Thanks.”

“Like I said, no problem.”

Harry and Nico didn’t talk for the rest of the night, but Harry couldn’t help feeling like he might have made a new friend. Or at least a new ally.


	5. Ed V

Being a Slytherin was probably the most fun Ed had had since he’d found out he was a demigod. Actually, it was more torturing his housemates with harmless pranks. That is, harmless by demigod standards. A few fires, some spilled Swelling Solution, Skiving Snackbox halves ‘borrowed’ from the Weasley Twins, and that one time involving Malfoy, a bucket filled with glue and feathers, and a half-open door, all in less than a week. His siblings in the Hermes Cabin would be proud, and maybe more than a little jealous. Having magic at his disposal made pranking a lot easier and gave him a lot more options. Pretending to be asleep and ‘accidently’ lighting Malfoy’s hair on fire? Just one spell required. It was great.

Great at distracting him from the reasons that he was pulling pranks in the first place, namely a meeting and a letter. The former was also why, the Saturday after they arrived, all the demigods were sitting at the Hufflepuff table waiting for the American trip information seminar to begin. Harry Potter, who had somehow become one of the only wizards to talk to Nico without turning the colour of oatmeal, asked why they were still there when they were from America, and seemed satisfied when Will told him that there was a chance they could go on the trip. Hermione was listening in, quiet well for someone who wasn’t a non-Stoll child of Hermes, and nodded approvingly when Sapphire said that it was mostly for interest.

They waited about three minutes before Professor Sinestra took the stage. “Everyone, settle down please!” The few students who had been playing Exploding Snap or trading Chocolate Frog cards hurriedly packed up and turned to face the front of the hall. With all the commotion none of the wizards noticed Dumbledore peeking through a partially open door on the side of the hall near the Slytherin table. Ed did. He elbowed Sapphire and pointed it out and she passed it on to Leo. In six seconds flat all of the demigods knew that Dumbledore was watching.

“I only have one hour to convince all of you to give up a month of your summer break and come with us to America so I’m going to break out my best argument now: No homework,” Sinestra said. Hermione and a few Ravenclaws groaned.

“That’s it, I’m sold,” Leo said loudly. Sapphire and Hazel laughed. The other demigods rolled their eyes.

“Thank you, Mr. Mason.” Professor Sinestra waved her wand and the floating candles all moved towards the back of the hall. With her next spell a glass pyramid that was sitting on the Head Table lit up and projected a map of North America on the front wall. As Professor Sinestra spoke the map zoomed in until all that was shown was Long Island. The demigods looked at each other. “This is where we’ll be going. The camp is located on Long Island, but it is what we would call ‘unplottable’ so I can’t show you exactly where it is or what it looks like.”

“ _Thank the gods,_ ” Nico muttered in Ancient Greek.

“Can you tell us what _creatures_ live there?” Draco Malfoy asked with a sneer. He was obviously only there because his father forced him to go, for whatever reason.

Even from the back of the hall it was easy to see Professor Sinestra’s eyes flash dangerously. “They are not creatures. They are the children of gods.” And there was the statement that they did not want to hear. Sadly, they were expecting it so, fortunately, Ed didn’t fall out of his seat like he had at the start-of-year feast.

“What?” It was pretty much impossible to figure out who had shouted that, though Ed would put his money on Ron Weasley. After a second of silence the hall erupted into noise that could match that of the campfire crowd at Camp after an insane announcement. Actually, the people at the campfire would probably be loud enough to be heard from Brooklyn House when Chiron announced that they were having wizards come to stay.

So the noise in the hall wasn’t matching, because that announcement was completely insane.

Professor Sinestra sent off one cannon blast sound with her wand and everyone in the hall stopped shouting and turned to look at her. “Sit down!” The one person who had stood up to do their shouting blushed and slowly sat. Professor Sinestra sighed. “The Headmaster will not be happy with me if I put all of you under a silencing spell but, Merlin help me, I will if you do not allow me to talk. Is that clear?” Nods all around, with a half nod from Leo as he was waving his wand trying to create a cannon noise. Sapphire took it out of his hand.

“These people call themselves ‘half-bloods’ or ‘demigods’. They are the children of the Greek gods in the old Muggle stories who, contrary to popular belief, are _not_ extremely powerful wizards, Miss Turpin.” A Ravenclaw girl lowered her hand. Professor Sinestra took a breath before she began speaking again.

“They have _graciously_ allowed us to join them for the summer to experience their training.” Oh, that was going to go just great. None of the students had run a day in their life, except for Harry Potter. The dryads were going to have a field day. None of them were wired for fighting. Clarisse…er, Mark? Sherman? Whoever was going to be head of the Ares cabin come summer was going to murder them.

Hermione raised her hand.

“Yes, Miss Granger?”

“What do you mean by ‘training’, professor? Is it learning a different type of magic?” Hermione asked.

It was hard to tell with the shadows covering the front of the hall, but Ed thought he saw Professor Sinestra smile before answering. “No, Miss Granger. Demigods are born warriors. Their training is physical. They learn to fight with weapons, to sail ships, and I hear they have a very interesting climbing wall.”

“You expect us to act like filthy _Muggles_?” a Slytherin asked with disgust. It wasn’t Malfoy, he was too busy picking his jaw up off the floor.

“I expect you to have respect for people who could kill you before you cast a spell, Miss Parkinson!” Pansy Parkinson shrunk back with a scowl on her face. Professor Sinestra rounded on the rest of the Slytherins. “Are there any other _questions_?” Every Slytherin shook their head. “Good.”

Professor Sinestra began talking about the camp again, but Ed tuned her out. As usual, his ADHD brain started making random connections. Wizards were going to be at Camp Half-Blood. British _wizards._ British wizards who were practically at war with more British wizards who wanted to destroy non-wizards.

Dumbledore knew about Camp.

Snape knew about Camp.

_Voldemort knew about Camp!_

Okay, pause. No need to jump that far down the rabbit hole. What happened to those rocks Mike turned into rabbits? That was a weird day… Concentrate! Wizards at Camp Half-Blood, Clarisse would be thrilled. Clarisse would be a mother by this summer, she wouldn’t be at Camp. Camp Half-Blood wasn’t for families.

Camp Half-Blood wasn’t for wizards. Why did Dumbledore want them there? Because it had to be Dumbledore’s idea. The Ministry would want to kill them. Umbridge. Where was Umbridge?

Ed looked around. He didn’t see her but she could be listening in somehow. The Ministry would want to know about this trip, so she had to be listening.

“ _Sapphire_ ,” he whispered in Ancient Greek.

“ _Yes?_ ”

“ _Is Umbridge here?_ ”

Sapphire closed her eyes. After a few moments she shook her head. “ _I don’t sense her. Nico?_ ”

“ _She’s not here,_ ” Nico confirmed. Okay, so Umbridge wasn’t spying, but Dumbledore was. Dumbledore, Dumbledore, what did he want?

Sapphire elbowed him and Ed dimly realized that the meeting was over. He stood up and looked over the Hufflepuff table to the doorway where Dumbledore was lurking. Had been lurking. The headmaster had stepped out just long enough to catch the attention of the Golden Trio and then he had ducked back inside the room, masking his presence with the flood of students leaving. The Golden Trio were not as subtle, pushing their way across the hall to reach the room.

“ _I’m going to listen in,_ ” Nico told them as he turned his back to the rest of the hall. “ _Cover me._ ” The rest of the demigods milled around to block Nico from view as he made his way towards the wall and disappeared into the shadows.

“Let’s go,” Hazel said once he had successfully vanished. “I still have that Transfiguration essay to finish.”

“Why are you even bothering?” Leo asked. “It’s not like these marks are going to do anything for you.”

“Getting good marks will stop teachers from paying too much attention,” Sapphire reminded him. “Which is pretty important considering what my father will do if we fail.”

Leo paled. “Point taken.”

Will patted him on the back. “Look at it this way; at least _we_ don’t have homework. We’d barely scrape a D between the two of us.”

“Says the doctor,” Ed muttered.

They poked fun at each other until they had to split up at the staircase but Ed’s heart wasn’t really in it. As they were walking to the Slytherin common room Sapphire asked, “What are you thinking?”

Ed looked at her. “ _What does Dumbledore want?_ ”


	6. Wizards VI

Dumbledore flicked his fingers and the door shut behind them. “Lemon drop?”

Harry blinked and looked around the room that was an exact replica of the Headmaster’s office, minus all the instruments that usually covered his desk. “No thank you, sir.”

“That’d be gr—Oof!” Ron rubbed his side where Hermione had elbowed him. “No thank you, Headmaster,” Hermione said politely.

Dumbledore smiled. His eyes twinkled. “Have a seat Miss Granger, Mister Weasley, Mister Potter.” They sat in the squishy chairs that had appeared across from the Headmaster.

“You wanted to see us, sir?” Hermione asked unnecessarily.

“Yes, Miss Granger. Tell me, what do you think of the demigod camp?”

Hermione’s eyes lit up. She started talking so fast that Harry was only able to catch maybe one word in three. Dumbledore was nodding along with her.

“Hermione!” Hermione stopped talking and looked at Ron. “Could you summarize for all us dimwitted Gryffindors in the room?” Ron asked.

“Slowly,” Harry added.

Hermione blushed. “I think that it will be interesting to spend time with them. There’s a lot we could learn. Maybe they could help with the fight against V-Voldemort.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “Do you think they could? I mean, what use are swords and stuff against spells?”

“Miss Granger is correct. Demigods use very special materials to construct their weapons. They should have no trouble deflecting most spells,” Dumbledore said. “Mister Potter, I would especially like for you to join us on this trip.”

“Why do you care, sir?”

“Harry!” Hermione admonished.

“Mister Potter—”

“Professor, you’ve been getting along just fine without me. I’m insane, remember? The demigods would be happy not to have me there.” Harry got up and stormed out of the room.

Hermione and Ron looked at each other. Hermione looked at Dumbledore. “We’ll talk to him, sir.”

“Thank you, Miss Granger. You may go.” They did. Dumbledore sat back in his chair and helped himself to a few lemon drops. It was imperative that Harry Potter, the Chosen One, The-Boy-Who-Lived, go to Camp Half-Blood. If he didn’t, the chances of Dumbledore getting the demigods to agree to fight for them when war came went down to almost nothing. No warrior would let a child fight a war on their own, after all.

Hermione and Ron caught up to Harry at the staircase. “Harry, you shouldn’t have talked to Professor Dumbledore like that!”

“Why? Why not? It’s not like he cares,” Harry snapped.

Ron rolled his eyes. “Not this again, mate.” That was the wrong thing to say. Ron figured that out about a second after he said it but it was too late.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'NOT THIS AGAIN'? I SAW VOLDEMORT COME BACK AND THE ONE PERSON WHO CAN FIGHT HIM WON’T ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I EXIST!” 

“HE JUST DID!” The two boys stopped staring each other down and looked with shock at Hermione. She took a few deep breaths. “Harry, Dumbledore is doing his best. You know that with Umbridge here he can’t be seen as too close to you.”

“I-I know,” Harry admitted, “but it would be nice if he treated me like a normal student. He’s been ignoring me since summer and then he goes and does this.”

“Pardon me! Coming though!” The trio looked up the stairs to see Leo Mason coming towards them carrying a stack of cardboard boxes. Where he got them none of them knew. Did wizards even use cardboard?

Mason dodged imaginary people on the way down the stairs, and slid down the railing for the last couple of feet. “What are you doing?” Hermione asked when he’d reached them.

“Just running some errands for Professor Burbage. You’re Gryffindors, right? You’d better get up to your common room. Curfew is soon and Umbridge is doing patrols tonight.” Mason shifted the boxes to one hand and gave them a wave before walking away in the direction of Professor Burbage’s office, whistling.

Hermione checked her watch and let out a squeak. “He’s right, we have to go!” They ran to the common room, dodging an attack from Peeves on the way. They made it just in time.

Harry lay on his bed, thinking. Ron’s snores filled the room, but the rest of them were used to it after enduring five years of it. Maybe he could go to the demigod camp. It would get him away from the Dursley’s at least, and the demigods couldn’t know about Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived. He could be just Harry.

That would be nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly don't know if Dumbledore is manipulative or just misinformed.


	7. House-Elves VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotten complaints about this chapter because it's written the way house-elves talk. I encourage you to try to read it, but if it bothers you I'll have a summary at the bottom of the page in normal syntax.

Hogwarts was always being very dirty after the masters students came back. It was making the house-elves happy to be doing the cleaning up again! Nod was being very happy because he was being given an important letter to take to America from master headmaster Dumbly-door. Big master Dionysus was very nice to Nod after the Hecate metal magic boy let him into Camp Half-Blood. Master Chiron wasn’t happy about the letter but he was nice to Nod too.

When Nod got back from the Camp he went back to his regular assignment of cleaning the snake masters students common room every other night with Blinky. They was very glad not to be cleaning the lion-griffin masters students common room because someone was leaving _clothes_ all over the place wanting to be _freeing house-elves!_ Mad Dobby got to do all the cleaning of the lion-griffin masters students common room after the house-elves found out _that_.

Nod was going to sweep the hearth when he saw the Hades fire magic girl sleeping on the couch with her small big cat curled up on her head. Nod squeaked in alarm. The small big cat’s eyes flew open. He jumped to his feet, which woke up the Hades fire magic girl. There was a brief scuffle that ended with Nod staring cross-eyed at the end of the girl’s wand.

“Wait, what?” The girl blinked and lowered her wand. “You’re a house-elf.”

“Nod is being sorry for waking miss up!” Nod squeaked.

“It’s alright. I didn’t mean to fall asleep down here anyway.”

“Is miss being okay?” Nod asked. The Hades fire magic girl had dark bags under her eyes and the hand holding her wand was shaking.

“I’m fine, Nod, right? I’m fine, Nod. I just haven’t been getting much sleep,” the girl said.

“Miss should go to bed,” Nod said firmly. “Miss shouldn’t be sleeping on the couch.”

The Hades fire magic girl laughed tiredly. “I don’t think that’ll help, Nod.”

“Miss should go see her Hephaestus fire boy,” Nod suggested. The small big cat, who had been grooming himself, looked at Nod with wide eyes.

“What did you say?” Hades fire magic girl asked slowly.

Nod was thinking that she had fallen asleep and not heard him, so he repeated himself. “Hades fire magic girl should go see her Hephaestus fire boy.”

“How do you know about the gods?” Hades fire magic girl asked.

“Nod was going to Camp Half-Blood with a letter from master headmaster Dumbly-door.”

Hades fire magic girl tilted her head and blinked. “Huh. That makes a lot of sense. You won’t tell anyone about us, right?”

Nod nodded, his ears flapping. “House-elves is being keeping students safe! Miss and her friends is students.”

“Thank you, Nod.” Hades fire magic girl petted her small big cat. “Leo is probably awake…” The small big cat meowed. “Oh come on, Jay. It’s not like we haven’t sleep together before.” The small big cat meowed frantically. “Not like that! My gods, Jay.” Hades fire magic girl shook her head.

“Is miss being going?” Nod asked when she picked up the small big cat.

“Yes, Nod. Thank you for your suggestion, and keep up the good work.” Hades fire magic girl smiled at Nod as she disappeared into the shadows with the small big cat.

Blinky popped out from where she was being hiding behind a tapestry. “Nod is should not being talking to students during cleaning!” she scolded.

“Nod is being helping Hades fire magic girl,” Nod argued. “And now we is getting back to work. We is good house-elves.”

Blinky couldn’t argue with that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A summary, as promised.  
> -a house-elf named Nod carried a letter from Dumbledore to Chiron (presumably before the school year began or very near the start of the semester) about having Hogwarts students visit Camp  
> -Nod is one of the house-elves who cleans the Slytherin common room (NOT the Gryffindor common room, because Hermione is leaving hats everywhere and all the elves except for Dobby are not happy about it)  
> -Nod ends up waking up Sapphire, who is in the common room because nightmares, and we find out that house-elves have some way of knowing about demigods and their powers (he calls Sapphire "Hades fire magic girl")  
> -Nod tries to be helpful because house-elves are supposed to make sure the students are safe and healthy, but he probably doesn't realize that most humans (and sabre-toothed Spartoi cats) get weird about people of the opposite gender sharing a bed, even if it does help with nightmares  
> -there is another house-elf called Blinky, because having house-elves named Winky, Blinky, and Nod amused me


	8. Hazel VIII

Anyone who was looking into the sixth year Gryffindor/Slytherin History of Magic class would be very surprised. There were actually people awake.

While Professor Binns continued droning on about some goblin rebellion, Hazel, Nico, Sapphire, and Ed got out of their seats and quietly made their way to a dark corner in the back of the classroom. Hazel froze for a moment on the way there when Cormac McLaggen snored right beside her.

“Forty five minutes,” Sapphire whispered. “Let’s go.”

The three siblings and Ed joined hands. Shadows wrapped around them and they hurled through the darkness. Voices, many more voices than Hazel had ever heard during shadow travelling, screamed and hissed at them. Ghosts, some of Melinoe’s no doubt, buffeted them, wailing. By the time they reached the Gaunt shack, Hazel’s ears were ringing.

“What the heck was that?” Sapphire asked once they’d caught their breath.

“Not a clue,” Nico said. Hazel and Ed just shook their heads.

Nico stepped closer to the rundown house and stopped when he was a few feet from the back fence, what was left of it anyway. “Spells start here.”

“I see them,” Hazel said. Her eyes traveled up to the top of the multi-coloured dome that covered the shack. “About twenty different ones, if I had to guess.” And she had to guess. She was favoured by Hecate, not her daughter.

Nico stepped back and drew his sword out of his bag. He swung the Stygian iron blade through the air in front of him. It hit the dome and kept going. Where it touched the woven spells it left black stains that traveled up through the dome and caused the spells to crumble.

Nico completed the swing. He brought the sword to rest at his side. “Did that do anything?”

“They’re all gone,” Hazel told him. There was still an aura of magic hovering around the shack, but that was normal for wizarding dwellings, even long abandon ones.

“Hang on a second,” Ed said as Nico and Hazel went to step onto the property. He hissed and waited. After a few seconds a long shape moved towards them through the grass. The large snake propped its head up on a rock and hissed back.

After more hissing from Ed and the snake, the snake gave what was unmistakably a nod and slithered away through the grass. “She was nicer than I expected,” Ed commented.

“Are we good to go?” Sapphire asked.

Ed nodded. “All the snakes are in a hurry to get out of here. They shouldn’t be a problem.” 

Aside from the dome of spells and the drafted snakes, Voldemort didn’t have any defences on his Horcrux until they got to its hiding place.

“Wait.” Nico waited while Hazel used her wand and her power over the Mist to deactivate the spells placed over the floor containing the board that was oozing darkness. “It’s safe to walk on now.”

“What would it have done?” Sapphire asked as they walked into the sad excuse for a room.

Hazel grimaced. “Let’s just say it would have been really messy.”

Nico pried up the floorboard and Hazel peeled away all of the curses coating the hiding space and the box within it. There was some really nasty stuff in there, and Hazel had a hard time believing that Voldemort had cast them when he was still in school. After she had pulled the curses far enough away, Nico took the little wooden box out of the floor and opened it carefully.

“There should be another curse on the ring,” Sapphire said. “One that makes flesh rot, or something like that.”

“I see it.” It was a very disgusting curse. Hazel had to force herself not to throw up as she peeled it away. “Do I have to hold on to this one?”

“Yes,” Sapphire and Ed said in unison. “You can get rid of the others though,” Sapphire added.

“Thank the gods.” Hazel let the other curses dissolve into Mist.

Nico took the ring out of the box and they stared at it. The Resurrection Stone mounted on the gold band showed its power clearly to the three siblings, and even Ed seemed to sense it slightly. “Can you imagine how pissed Thanatos must be about that thing?” he asked after a moment of silence.

“If the wizards’ story is true he probably thinks it’s a good joke,” Sapphire pointed out. She squinted at the ring and then reached into the band, pinching something between her fingers. When she drew them out a flap of shadow came with them. She pulled and stepped back until she had drawn out the entire thing. The shadow of a teenage boy writhed and snapped in her grasp until Nico had to hand the ring to Ed and help her hold it.

“ _Sheut_ ,” Ed said decisively.

“What?” Nico asked.

“That’s Voldemort’s _sheut_ ,” Ed said. “It’s got to be.”

“His shadow, one of the five parts of a human soul according to the Egyptians.” Nico nodded. “That makes sense.”

“I guess it’s too much to hope that if we kill it he’ll cease to exist,” Sapphire grumbled.

Nico sighed. “Well, he’s not exactly playing by our rules.” By which he meant mythological rules. “Hazel, could you do the honours?” Nico passed her his sword. She looked at it, looked at the squirming shadow, and stabbed the shadow where a real person’s heart would be. There was a long, shrill scream, and then the shadow vanished. Nico dusted his hands off and took his sword back.

“One down,” he said.

“Five to go,” Sapphire finished. “Let’s clean up here. Then we can go back to our _wonderful_ history class.”

Ed quirked an eyebrow at her. “You just spoke with a British accent.”

Sapphire blinked, and then groaned. “It’s only been two months!”

Ed put the ring back in its box and Hazel layered the flesh-destroying curse back over it. Then they nestled it safely under the floorboard, ready for Dumbledore to come pick it up. It was a shame that they couldn’t stop that, but completely messing up the set timeline was not something they wanted to do.

The shadow travel trip back to Hogwarts wasn’t as noisy as the trip out had been. They got back to History of Magic undetected, and even managed to catch a quick nap before their next class, Charms for Hazel and Nico and Transfiguration for Ed and Sapphire.

“We’ll see you at lunch,” Hazel said to the Slytherin demigods.

Ed nodded. “See you.”

As Hazel and Nico turned they nearly ran smack into the pink toad, Umbridge. She smiled at them with sharp little teeth. “You really should watch where you’re going, children. Someone might get hurt.” She walked away and Hazel looked at her brother. Nico shook his head slightly. She wasn’t imagining it, that had definitely been a threat.


	9. Wizards IX

Hermione Jean Granger was a mystery lover. She had worked her way through all of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes by the time she was twelve and read every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys book imported from America. Searching for the identity of the mystery package in first year had been quite a lot of fun for her, except for the almost dying part.

The American students were giving her a whole new mystery to work on.

The two Levesques in Gryffindor wouldn’t tell her anything about their school and in Care of Magical Creatures Fletcher would only answer questions about the class. Hermione blamed Lavender and Parvati for both of those situations. Neither of her roommates would stop flirting with Fletcher, and Lavander kept trying to get her claws into Nico Levesque despite being told repeatedly that he was taken.

Hermione wanted to know everything she could about Five Rivers Academy of Magic, so it was off to the library. She could also take the time to look up some defensive spells. They were going to fail their OWLs if Umbridge had anything to say about it. After collecting a stack of books and with a good chunk of her free period remaining, Hermione had to find a place to sit in a library filled with NEWT students with the same DADA idea as her. She turned into the languages section and couldn’t believe her luck. “Could I sit here?”

Sapphire Levesque looked up from the book she was reading. Judging by the illustration of a woman being burnt at the stake, it was the history textbook. “I don’t know, can you?”

Zhang sighed. “Have a seat, Granger. Sorry about Sapphire. Apparently today being tired means loosing filters.” Sapphire stuck her tongue out at him while Hermione sat down.

“Filters are for coffee and cigarettes,” Sapphire said. “Two things I could use right now.”

Zhang began counting off on his fingers without looking up from his book. “One, you don't smoke. Two, coffee is a bad thing for you to have. Three, I read that book too. Four, filters are also for swimming pools, cars, and air conditioners.”

“Are you Muggle-borns?” Hermione asked with surprise. Everything Zhang, and Sapphire, had just named was something Muggle.

“Nope,” Sapphire replied as she went back to studying. “Half-bloods.”

“All of you?” Hermione asked.

“Yup.”

Well, that was a lot more information than Hermione, or anyone, had managed to get out of the other Americans. Everyone was sure that the Levesque siblings were purebloods. Hermione decided to press her luck with a few more questions. “Are there a lot of half-bloods at Five Rivers?”

“Mostly,” Sapphire said. “Some purebloods, and a few Muggle-borns. If you’re thinking of transferring, I wouldn’t.”

This advice sent Hermione’s eyebrows far into her hair. “What! Why not?”

Sapphire opened her mouth to reply but was cut off when Zhang kicked her under the table.

“You have to be family or get a letter of reference,” Zhang said. “You’re smart, Granger, but that’s not enough.”

“Well, I didn’t want to transfer anyway,” Hermione said firmly. She tried not to feel insulted that smarts weren’t enough to get her into a school, and failed. She took the book off the top of her pile and opened it on the table in front of her. “I just want to know more about it.”

Sapphire laughed. “Good luck.” Zhang kicked her again and Sapphire scowled. Hermione didn’t try asking any more real questions after that, but she did get to take notes from all the books she managed to read, and mostly ignore Sapphire’s snickers while she did.

Mostly.

“Would you stop laughing?” she exclaimed when Zhang left to find a book.

Sapphire looked at her with a wide grin. “No. I haven’t slept through the night since school started, and it’s too funny that a Gryffindor is sitting with two Slytherins.” She went back to reading her history textbook.

“Maybe you should ask Madam Pomfrey for a sleeping potion,” Hermione suggested hesitantly.

Sapphire gritted her teeth briefly. “Definitely not.” 

After enduring Sapphire’s giggles interspersed with snatches of Muggle songs, Hermione went to Potions with her head spinning. It was almost as bad as having a conversation with Luna.

“You alright, Hermione?” Neville whispered while Snape was far over on the Slytherin side of the classroom.

“I think so. Stop!” Neville froze just as he was about to add a spoonful of crushed nettle to his potion. “Cauldron off the fire.”

Neville blushed and followed her orders. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Hermione said.

“Five points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger,” Snape snapped. Every Gryffindor just managed not to roll their eyes.

“Five points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger, for making sure no one has to go to the Hospital Wing,” Ron mimicked as they entered their common room. “Bet you he’d take a hundred points if you stopped Death Eaters from murdering us all!”

“May I remind you, Ronald, that Professor Snape is the least of our worries?” Hermione said.

Ron sighed. “Sure, but he’s still a slimy git.”

“He’s on our side.”

“Harry, back me up mate!” Ron looked at Harry.

“I agree with Ron,” Harry said with a yawn. “Is the practice schedule up?” Since everyone in the common room was crowded around the notice board the answer to that was probably “No”. The three of them didn’t have to put up much of a fight to push through the crowd since a good forty percent of people backed away from Harry like he had dragon pox.

As soon as she saw the notice that held everyone attention, Hermione screamed, “She can’t do that!”

“What the hell is a high inquisitor?” Ron asked.

He jumped when Nico Levesque answered from right beside his ear. “I think that it’s a fancy way of saying that the Ministry’s interfering at Hogwarts, big time.”

Ron turned to Hermione for confirmation and found her nodding. “Yes, that’s it exactly. The Ministry is interfering at Hogwarts.”


	10. Leo X

A week after Umbridge’s “I’m going to destroy the school, mwah ha ha ha!” announcement Leo was setting up for the fifth year Muggle Studies class when the pink toad herself walked in. She looked at Leo with the same face Aphrodite girls had worn whenever he came close to them when he was at Camp before the quest to free Hera. It was the look that said “Ew, who is this loser?”

“Where is Professor Burbage?” Umbridge demanded.

“She’s coming,” Leo said. “Is there anything I can do for you, miss?”

Umbridge sniffed and sat down in the chair that he had put by the door. “I assume Professor Burbage received my message detailing the date and time of her inspection?”

“She did.” Leo turned away from the pink menace and concentrated on transfiguring the blackboard into a white screen. He concentrated really hard, because he didn’t want to set it on fire with the toad in the room.

“Heh hem,” Umbridge coughed.

Leo ignored her until he had finished transfiguring the board. “You’ve had that cough for a long time, professor. Maybe you should have Madam Pomfrey check it out for you.”

“I am _quite_ alright, Mister Mason,” Umbridge snapped. “Why is Professor Burbage not here now?”

“I’m teaching today, so I had to set up.” Umbridge sniffed obviously. “I understand if you’d like to come back when she’s teaching,” Leo suggested sweetly.

“That will not be necessary, Mister Mason.” Umbridge sat with her nose in the air until students began to arrive. They she pounced on them with all the gentleness of a hellhound asking things like, “Who forced you to take this class?” and “Do you believe that Muggle Studies is a waste of time?” Leo and Professor Burbage, who had arrived just before the first group of students, were glad to see that all of the class silently rebuffed Umbridge or gave her such twisty, confusing answers that she couldn’t be sure what the answer actually was. That second option was mostly the Ravenclaws.

“All right, kids,” Leo said with a grin once he’d taken attendance. “I promised you a fun class, and fun it shall be.” He rubbed his hands together and then banished a stack of parchment so that each student had a worksheet in front of them. Ha! He was getting better at this magic stuff. “All you have to do is answer those questions. Completion marks, people!”

A Ravenclaw boy raised his hand. “Yes, Summers?” Man, calling people he actually liked by their last name was weird.

“Sir, there’s nothing about this in our textbooks,” Summers said.

Leo grinned. “That’s because it’s not in your textbooks.” Deciding not to push his luck with his control of magic, he stuck out his hand and whipped the cloth off the projector with a flourish. “Today we are watching a movie!”

“A what?” were the words most heard after that announcement. There were also a few exclamations of “Brilliant!” and “A what?”

Leo forced himself not to face palm. “A movie. A form of entertainment created by Muggles that is like a play that is recorded and then played back.” Several blank faces still looked up at him.

“That isn’t in our textbooks, sir,” Summers said hesitantly. This time Leo did face palm. For the love of all the gods, why were their textbooks decades out of date?

“Just watch.” He ducked behind the desk, grumbling, and tapped at the computer sitting under it. There were a few gasps as the movie was projected on the screen and began playing. The entire setup was running without a hitch, which made Leo happy. It had taken him forever to rig the laptop and projector to work around magic.

Umbridge was wearing a glare that grew more and more frigid as the movie went on. It definitely wasn’t anything like a child of the Underworld glare. Hey, she really hated him. That upped the probability of her being descended from Khione.

“I hope I’m not getting you in trouble,” Leo whispered to Professor Burbage.

“It’ll be fine, Leo,” Burbage assured him, taking her eyes off the screen for the first time since the movie had started. “She hates this class anyway, so she can’t do any worse than she would have.” 

Some of the students got so absorbed in the movie that they forgot to work on the questions until the end of the class. The scrawled answers on ink-splotched pages wrecked hell on Leo’s dyslexia when he was trying to mark the worksheets later that night.

“Leo, you have the whole weekend to mark.” Sapphire leaned over the back of his chair and put her chin on his shoulder. She looked down at the worksheet he was holding his pen over. “Oh, the other classes didn’t watch the World War Two documentary?”

“Just the sixth and seventh years,” Leo said. “Everyone else watched that old movie your sister likes.”

“ _Cellular_?”

“That one.” Leo bit his lip and underlined what he was pretty sure was a misspelling of ‘cellphone’.

“That’s not that old.” Even with the British accent Sapphire had nowadays, Leo heard her smiling as she spoke. She kissed him on the cheek and then said, “Come to bed, Fire Boy. It’s late.”

Leo blinked and rolled his shoulders as she moved away. “It is? I didn’t notice.”

Sapphire laughed. “That’s because you don’t have a clock in here.” To be fair, the bedroom that Leo was in had come with a clock, but that clock was charmed to yell if the room’s occupant was even a second late for anything. So he’d smashed it with a hammer. As you do with yelling clocks.

Without the clock, the walls of the bedroom were empty. No tapestries or portraits that could go tattling to the teachers, so they could speak freely. Oh, and Sapphire and Jay could sleep there without anyone knowing.

Jay was already curled up in the middle of the bed. As Leo and Sapphire climbed in on either side of him, he opened one eye and meowed threateningly at Leo. “I’m not stupid, cat.” Jay meowed again, less threateningly, and went back to sleep.

“Do you think we’ll find that stupid diadem tomorrow?” Sapphire asked quietly. “We have to have covered almost the entire room already.” The phrase “find that stupid diadem” was one Sapphire had been saying a lot lately, along with “kill that gods-damned snake”. The repetition could bring Leo to only one conclusion: His girlfriend was homesick.

“I’m sure we’ll find it,” he yawned. “Then we can storm Moldy Face’s hideout, kill the snake not scotch it, and be home for Christmas.”

“I’m glad someone’s optimistic.” She yawned. “I’d say Easter if we’re lucky, which we’re not. And what about the locket?”

“If all else fails, kidnap a house-elf?” Leo suggested.

Sapphire laughed. “Go to sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They were silent for a few moments, then Sapphire asked, “What do you think this summer’s going to be like?”

Leo thought about it. “Very annoying or a whole lot of fun.”

“Chiron would never let us get conscripted into the wizards’ war, right?”

Leo shook his head. “Never.” Chiron valued their lives too much to make them get involved in what was technically a civil war that didn’t involve them, though if some demigods left on their own to fight Voldemort he would support their choice. He was like a father that way, the best father in the world, with a horrible taste in music. 

“Thank the gods.”

“Definitely.” Leo yawned again. “Go to sleep, Aimi. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”


	11. Will XI

“I found it!”

Will and Nico followed Hazel’s yell and turned the corner to find the other members of the quest group staring at the bust of some wizard that was sitting beside a broken cabinet. Not staring at the bust, but at the bejewelled tiara sitting on its head. After they had stared for a few moments, Ed asked, “What do we do with it?”

Hazel walked right up to the bust and plucked the diadem of Ravenclaw right off its head. Not that it really had anything more than head. “We take it to the Chamber of Secrets and stab it with a basilisk fang,” she said firmly.

“It’s a priceless historical artifact,” Ed mourned. Will grimaced. Ed was right, but they still had to destroy it. Unless…

“Can’t one of you pull the soul piece out of it?” Will looked at Nico, Hazel, and Sapphire. The three of them looked at each other.

“Maybe,” Hazel said. She turned the diadem this way and that. Eventually she reached into it like it was a hat. Her hand closed like she was grabbing hold of something and, like a magician with a rabbit, she pulled out some sort of bird with the head of a handsome young man. It struggled to break free of her grasp.

“ _Ba_ ,” Sapphire and Ed said in unison. Nico nodded.

Sapphire took out her sword and swung it through Voldemort’s _ba_ , which disappeared in an explosion of feathers. “Two down, four to go.”

“I’m going to go _talk_ to the goblins to see if we can make it three,” Nico told them. He disappeared into the shadows near the cabinet.

Sapphire put her sword away and, for some reason, dusted off her hands. “His _ba_ ,” she said like she was continuing a conversation. She started counting off on her fingers. “His _ba_ here, his _sheut_ in the ring, I’m willing to bet his _ren_ was in the diary. That leaves his _ka_ and his _ib_. What’s in the Horcruxes when he runs out of soul?”

Ed shrugged. “ _Je ne sais pas._ Maybe his _ka_ got chopped into pieces? That would explain why he didn’t die after the fifth Horcrux.”

“Maybe,” Sapphire mused.

Will looked over at Leo. “Please tell me you have no idea what they’re talking about either.”

“I have no idea what they’re talking about either,” Leo said with a smile.

“Liar,” Will said.

“I read Sapphire’s books sometimes.”

Hazel looked the diadem over one more time before putting it in her bag.

Leo raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to keep that, are you? Because that’s more of a child of Hermes thing.” Leo elbowed Ed and Ed punched Leo’s shoulder, lightly because they all knew what he had said was true.

“I’m not going to keep it,” Hazel said.

“Then what are you going to do with it?” Leo asked.

Hazel smiled.

The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower, commonly called the Grey Lady, was haunting the Astronomy Tower. This wouldn’t have made any sense except for the fact that she liked to be alone and Ravenclaw Tower was packed on the weekends.

This was according to Nico, who somehow most of the time knew where everyone in the castle was, including the living people.

Lady Helena was standing at the edge of the tower looking out over the Forbidden Forest when they arrived. The rest of them stayed back while Hazel and Sapphire went over to her, but they could still hear every word said.

“Lady Helena,” Hazel said. “We’ve found something that you may wish to see.” 

The ghost turned to face her. “What is it, daughters of Pluto?” Thankfully Sapphire didn’t jump down her throat to correct her. As annoying as it was that even the wizarding ghosts used only the Roman names, they needed Lady Helena not to run away.

“It belonged to your mother,” Sapphire said instead, as Hazel reached into her bag and pulled out the diadem.

Lady Helena’s face went through about as many emotions as a Hundred-Handed One before settling on complete astonishment. She waved her hand though the headpiece several times. “It is…cleansed,” she said with wonder. “How?”

“We have our ways,” Sapphire said with a smile. “What would you like us to do with it?”

Lady Helena wrung her hands. “It must be returned to its place,” she decided. “In Ravenclaw Tower. I will show you where. Come, all of you.” She turned and headed down the stairs.

Will was sure they would get caught, if not in the hallways then at least when they attempted to enter Ravenclaw Tower, but they didn’t. Sapphire hid them in the shadows, and the door to the tower opened right behind the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw that dominated the common room. It would be easy enough for Ed, the fastest of them, to dart in and place the diadem on its pedestal without anyone noticing him.

Once they solved the riddle.

“Could we have it again, please?” Leo asked the doorknocker. “Slower?”

The doorknocker seemed to sigh before saying, _“Four men were fishing in a boat on the lake. The boat turned over and all four men sank to the bottom of the lake. And yet, not one single man got wet. How is this possible?”_

Sapphire snapped her fingers. “None of them were single, they were all married.”

_“An unconventional answer, but true.”_ The door opened and Ed was in and out before Leo could finish blushing.

Ed gave Lady Helena a smile. “The package has been delivered.”

The ghost smiled back. “Thank you, children. Now, you should get out of here before you are caught, yes?”

They made it halfway down the hall before the explosion of sound from the Ravenclaw common room nearly knocked them over.


	12. Wizards XII

The mysterious appearance of the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw buoyed the mood in Hogwarts for a few days, especially with the Ravenclaws, but Umbridge managed to bring it down again. Educational Decree Number Thirteen declared that “all unauthorized suspected magical objects are subject to confiscation by the High Inquisitor” and she tried to enforce it right away with Ravenclaw’s Diadem.

It burnt her fingers as soon as she touched it.

When trying to levitate the diadem to her office caused Umbridge’s wand to start smoking, she finally gave up and went around tearing things away from students. Lavender Brown complained and cried for three days when Umbridge confiscated her diary, which bit anyone who wasn’t Lavender.

Hermione was very, very annoyed about that.

Umbridge also tried to confiscate Sapphire Levesque’s necklace, but came out of that confrontation looking like she’d just faced down a dragon and lost. Somehow none of the Americans got into trouble over that, though the Slytherin and Umbridge-sided students (mostly Slytherins) started actively avoiding them afterwards. 

The infection of Umbridge in the school started to get so bad that Ron, Ginny, and Hermione sat Harry down in the common room and started to talk. By the time Harry’s brain had caught up to what they were saying the three of them had become silent and were looking at him expectantly.

“Well?” Hermione asked.

“Are you mad?” Harry exclaimed. “I can’t teach!”

“You’re the best at Defence,” Hermione argued. “And you know all those spells from the Triwizard Tournament.”

“You know those too,” Harry said.

“You beat You-Know-Who three times!” Ron said loudly. Nico Levesque looked over at them and Ginny quickly shushed her brother. “You did,” Ron insisted, more quietly.

“But I had help! Every time I’ve faced Voldemort I’ve had help and gotten extremely lucky.”

“But Cedric’s—”

Harry cut Hermione off. “Do you want to say that because I’m alive and Cedric’s dead that I must be better than him? Cedric was ten times the wizard I’ll ever be!”

“I was not going to say that!” Hermione said crossly. “And don’t sell yourself short, Harry.”

“Mate, even if you think you can’t teach, we’re bound to learn more from you than we ever will from Umbitch,” Ron pointed out.

“Ronald!”

Rn shrugged. “It’s true.”

Hermione took a deep breath. “Look, I’ll set up a meeting for the next Hogsmeade weekend. _You_ can still back out if you want to, but we want to do something.”

Harry grimaced. “Hermione, how big of a meeting are you talking about?”

* * *

They took up four tables at the Three Broomsticks. The pub itself was, as usual, filled to bursting which, as Nico Levesque explained, would make it harder for them to be overheard. He was part of the meeting, as was his sister Hazel, but Zhang and Sapphire had been excluded for the sole reason that they were Slytherins, and because Nico and Sapphire together would probably scare everyone who wasn’t a Hogwarts student out of the pub.

Okay, so there was more than one reason.

“So that’s why we’re here,” Harry finished, “to learn to defend ourselves. And if you’re just here to hear stories then you’d better clear off right now.”

“I’m in.” Everyone sitting around the defence club tables turned to look at Nico, who hadn’t said a word since Hermione had started the meeting. “Where do I sign?”

“We’re in too,” Fred and George chimed, with Lee Jordan half a second behind them.

Every person at the meeting agreed that they wanted to join this club, or as some of them seemed to see it, a student resistance against Umbridge. Hermione passed around a sheet of parchment and they all signed their names on it.

“You didn’t put a curse on this or anything, right Hermione?” Hazel joked as she handed it back to her. Hermione blushed noticeably.

“Hermione?” Harry asked.

“Well, ah, no one can discuss this club with anyone aside from the people on this list.”

“Or-”

“-what?” Fred and George asked.

Hermione ducked her head. “You’ll get huge pimples on your face that spell out ‘sneak’.”

The Weasley twins began laughing. Cho Chang’s friend looked uncomfortable. A few other people looked at the parchment warily.

“None of you are going to say anything,” Hermione said fiercely. “So you have nothing to worry about.”

“Sure, Hermione,” Ginny said quickly. Her boyfriend was one of the ones looking like they might like to rip the parchment to bits. “What are we going to call ourselves?”

“We do need a name,” Luna Lovegood said in her dreamy voice. “What about the Crumple-Horned Snorkack Protection Group? No one would ever guess that we’re a defence club.”

“What about Dumbledore’s Army?” Ginny suggested. “Isn’t that what Umbridge is really afraid of?”

“And Fudge,” Ron said. “I like it.”

“All in favour of Dumbledore’s Army..?” Everyone’s hand shot into the air and Hermione wrote their new name across the top of the parchment with a flourish. “Thank you, everyone. We’ll let you know when our next meeting is soon. We just need to find a place to practice.”

“What about the Room of Requirement?” Hazel suggested. Looks of confusion were sent her way.

“The what?” several of the new Dumbledore’s Army members asked.

“The Room of Requirement,” Hazel repeated. “Also known as the Come and Go Room. Do none of you know about it?”

Head shakes all around.

Hazel blushed and sunk a bit under the table. “It’s something the house-elves know about. You could ask one of them how to find it.”

“It’s a room in Hogwarts that came become anything you need it to, within reason,” Nico explained. “Seriously, all of you have been here longer than we have. How have none of you found it?” He looked at Fred and George. “Especially you two.”

Fred and George looked at each other.

“Did he just—?”

“I believe he did.”

“We can’t let that stand.”

“Indeed we can’t.”

They looked back at Nico and said together, “Challenge accepted.”

“I think Fred and George have offered to find the Room of Requirement,” Harry muttered to Hermione.

“You’ll ask Dobby if they don’t,” Hermione said.

“Sure.”

Hermione raised her voice slightly to address the whole group. “We’ll have our next meeting in a week. And before you ask, we’ll arrange it not to clash with any Quidditch practices. Thank you again, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day.”


	13. Nico XIII

“What are we going to do about Christmas?” Leo asked.

Nico put down his empty glass and Nod, a house-elf who went out of his way to help the demigods, Apparated into the Room of Requirement, picked up the glass and Disapparated with a crack. “I think that I should stay and try to get into Number Twelve. The rest of you can go home if you want.”

Hazel, Ed, and Sapphire quickly sounded their agreement to his idea, though Ed was pacing around the room and probably shouldn't have heard what was said. How he still had so much energy after training was anyone's guess.

“You and Harry are friends,” Hazel pointed out. “You’re probably the only one of us he’d let go with him anywhere.”

Nico’s other sister had a different point. “If we have to stay here much longer, Umbitch and the Slytherins are going to end up missing limbs. Possibly essential organs.”

Nico stared at Sapphire, who was half asleep on the couch with her head on Leo’s shoulder. She hadn’t flinched while making the threat, hadn’t even smiled to show them that it was a joke. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked.

Sapphire opened one eye. “Peachy. Do you think we could ask Father if we can leave Harry and the snake? Those Horcruxes are easily taken care of in the predicted timeline, and we don’t even know if Nagini is a Horcrux yet. The sooner we get to leave the better.”

Leo laughed and they all turned to look at him. “And here I thought you liked Hogwarts.”

Sapphire sneered. “Some parts. It’s just that I want to tie Umbitch up beside Asher in the Fields of Punishment and leave her to rot.”

That was just what Nico wanted to hear.

Not.

“Okay, I think you definitely need to leave,” Nico said.

Ed nodded in agreement with Nico. “Uh, is it okay if I leave too?” He blushed slightly.

“Sure. Hazel, do you want to go too?” Nico asked. Hazel nodded.

“Leo and I have to stay since we’re technically not students,” Will said glumly. “Three and three I guess.”

Sapphire made a face. “Have fun.”

Leo grinned. “We will. I think there’s a lot in Umbridge’s office that’s flammable.”

“Please try not to destroy the school,” Nico grumbled.

“No promises,” Leo said.

“I’ll keep him under control,” Will promised. “Let’s go, it’s almost curfew.”

* * *

“Hagrid’s back,” Will told them when they met for lunch. “He showed the thestrals to the fifth years.”

“I’ll bet that went well,” Leo said. Will shrugged.

“Malfoy was an arse, wasn’t he,” Sapphire stated.

“Just a little,” Will said.

“Well, I have it on good authority that he’s going home for Christmas, so you’ll have some time free of him,” Sapphire told him.

“How many people could see them?” Nico asked. Will held up three fingers as his mouth was full. “Who?”

Will swallowed. “Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom, and Theodore Nott.”

Hazel sighed. “They’re just kids.”

Nico looked at her placidly. “So were we.”

* * *

Nico was no stranger to waking up to screams, but usually it was him or Percy doing the screaming. He thought now that the son of Poseidon was probably part banshee, that or being able to breathe underwater gave him superlungs.

This time though, it wasn’t him or Percy. It was Harry Potter.

Nico literally rolled out of bed and righted himself just before he hit the floor. He ran over to Harry’s bed and threw the curtains open just before Harry shouted “No!” and bolted awake.

Harry took a flying leap towards Ron, who was stumbling bleary-eyed out of his own bed. “Ron! Ron! Your dad! We have to help him! Dumbledore, we have to see Dumbledore!”

Nico caught Harry before he fell flat on his face. “Calm down, Harry. Breathe.”

Harry took a shaky breath and rubbed his scar. “Mr. Weasley was attacked. I saw it. He’s hurt.”

Nico nodded. “Okay. Let’s get you to Dumbledore.” He looked around at the rest of their roommates. “Ron, you’d better come with. The rest of you go back to sleep.”

Ron paled. “It was just a dream, wasn’t it Harry?”

“Some dreams are more than dreams,” Nico said grimly. “Trust me.”

Nico discreetly sent Sir Nicholas to tell Dumbledore that they were coming, but they ran into Neville and Professor McGonagall on the way. He hadn’t even noticed that the quiet boy was missing.

“We’re going to Dumbledore’s office,” Nico said before McGonagall could say anything. “Harry saw Mister Weasley get attacked.” Whatever look was on his face meant that McGonagall didn’t argue. She just turned around and went with them to Dumbledore’s office, Neville trailing along behind her like a lost puppy.

The password for the Headmaster’s office was some sort of candy, as was apparently usual. The five of them marched up the stairs and found Dumbledore sitting at his desk surrounded by paintings of past headmasters.

“Minerva, Mister Potter,” Dumbledore said with a nod. What were the rest of them, chopped liver?

“Professor, Mister Weasley was attacked! There was blood everywhere!” Harry said.

Dumbledore held up his hand. “Please, from the beginning. Mister Longbottom, Mister Levesque, Sir Nicholas will escort you back to your tower.”

Nico grabbed Neville’s arm just as the younger boy was turning to leave. “We’ll stay, thank you, Headmaster. Harry’s our friend.”

Dumbledore looked as if he was going to object, but was stopped by Harry launching into a condensed description of his dream. It sounded a whole lot like a demigod dream. He had watched Mr. Weasley get attacked by a huge snake. Voldemort’s snake, obviously.

“Well,” Dumbledore said when he was finished. He then spoke to one of the paintings, asking it to go and make sure Mr. Weasley was found by “the right people”. After sending Professor McGonagall to get the other Weasley children, he talked to another portrait and sent him off to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

“Mister Longbottom and Mister Levesque…” Dumbledore hesitated for a moment. “You will be remaining with Mister Potter.”

Nico nodded. Neville, who was already shaking in his slippers, paled considerably. He looked at Harry, and then looked back at Dumbledore and nodded.

The arrival of Ginny, Fred, and George filled the round room with confused babble. Dumbledore spoke a spell that Nico couldn’t hear over the noise and a large quill on his desk glowed blue. Everyone shut up.

“Please grab hold,” Dumbledore said. “Everything will be explained when you arrive.”

The wizards hurried to grab part of the quill, and Nico followed their lead. Seconds later he felt a tug behind his belly button. His head began to spin.

And everything went black.


	14. Sapphire XIV

The overnight disappearance of seven Gryffindors kept the student body busy until the train left. Dumbledore had called the remaining demigods to his office and fed them a story about Nico being invited to spend Christmas with the Weasleys and having to leave early due to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley not being able to pick them up on the day the Express left. The demigods swallowed the lie with nods and smiles, and then Sapphire began complaining about Dumbledore in Ancient Greek as soon as they left his office.

She really had to get out of that school.

The train ride to London was just as stressful for her as the one to Hogwarts had been, but for a different reason. She was going to have to speak to her father, face to face, without Nico nearby, and ask for something.

It was a scary thought. Very scary.

They got to the station without anyone being mauled by Jay. When they went through the barrier Sapphire’s fear immediately slapped her in the face. Her father was standing on the platform with a zombie carrying a dripping umbrella beside him.

She wasn’t sure which one scarier.

Hazel swallowed as soon as she saw Hades. _“I’ll be…on guard duty,”_ she said in Latin before disappearing to the other end of the platform. Ed and Sapphire looked at each other.

_I think you should go with her._

_It’s your father._

_It’s_ Hades.

_Point taken._ Ed hurried after Hazel.

Hades didn’t say anything as Sapphire approached him, just raised one eyebrow. Sapphire stopped a foot in front of him.

“Father.” She bowed her head in acknowledgement.

“Sapphire. How is school?”

“School is…school, father.” What else could she say?

“Of course,” Hades said. “Well, I’m here to take you and your friends home. Call them back, please.”

“Yes, Father.” Sapphire bowed her head again before backing away from the god of the dead.

It didn’t take Sapphire long to find Hazel and Ed, she just had to head towards the screaming. And the giant dragon.

“We’ve been back how long?” she shouted as she pulled out her sword and jumped into the fight.

“About five minutes,” Ed answered. “Watch out for the—”

The dragon’s tale swung around and knocked Sapphire into Hazel, the spikes at the end just missing both of their heads.

“—tail,” Ed finished. He fired his knife into the dragon’s left eye. The dragon roared and stumbled back, crushing a parked car and knocking aside others with its wings. 

“Flying monsters,” Sapphire muttered as she got up. “I hate flying monsters.”

Ed, being the only one of them with a projectile weapon, reeled in his knife and fired again. This time he tore through part of the skin of its left wing.

The dragon’s body was more poorly designed than a human body. When its blood came in contact with air it burst into flame, and the dragon was apparently not fireproof. A cut toe from Hazel and a fireball to the face from Sapphire added to the damage Ed had already done was enough to see it crumbling to dust.

“Fun,” Sapphire said. “Well, let’s go. My father’s waiting for us.”

“Your father is what?” Ed exclaimed.

So, Hades had a limo. It was a very nice limo, one that Demeter would have approved of except for the fact that it burned gas. The three of them sat in the back seat facing Hades, who was sipping a glass of wine.

“Don’t tell Dionysus. He seems determined to force his prohibition on the rest of us. Help yourselves to drinks. There’s nothing from the Underworld, I assure you,” Hades said.

Sapphire immediately grabbed two bottles of water and handed them to Ed and Hazel, who drank them carefully. They weren’t in the Underworld, but it did feel like it with Hades right across from them.

“Father,” Sapphire said hesitantly, “we were wondering if it would be okay to leave the living Horcruxes alone.” 

Hades looked at her and raised an eyebrow in a “do explain” motion. “Why?”

Sapphire bit her lip. “Well, we don’t know how to get the Horcrux out of Harry without killing him and the snake will be really, really well guarded. And if we get rid of those we’ll really mess with the projected timeline, which I’m guessing wouldn’t be a good thing.”

All three demigods, and one pet cat monster, tensed as Hades just looked at Sapphire. Hazel was probably the best at hiding it, though Ed was pretty good to.

“Fine,” Hades said at last. “You have my permission. You can come home as soon as the locket has been destroyed.”

Sapphire bowed her head. “Thank you, Father.”

“You’re welcome.” The limo jerked to a halt. Jay dug his claws into Sapphire’s legs to make sure that he would stay on her lap. “This is your stop. Happy Holidays.”

“You too, Father.”

Since none of them wanted to contradict the King of the Underworld, the grabbed their bags and jumped out of the car. Sapphire wasn’t the least bit surprised when they stepped out into Half-Blood Hill.

Okay, maybe just a little surprised, but not very. Hades was a god after all.

They walked down towards the cabins. Camp was still quite empty during winter. Sapphire saw Clarisse looking out of a window of the Big House and waved. Clarisse waved back.

Ed knocked on the door of the Hecate Cabin, which immediately flew open. “You’re back!” Mike said happily. “Here, let me get those charms off.” 

After Mike had removed the silver bracelets that their disguises were anchored to, Hazel immediately wished them Merry Christmas and headed for the portal to Camp Jupiter. None of them were offended. This quest was probably the longest she’d been away from Camp Jupiter since arriving there.

“So,” Sapphire asked, looking between the two boys, “when are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” Mike answered for both of them. He looked sideways at Ed. “My dad can’t wait to meet you. And Alyssa’s going to be coming for Christmas with her parents.”

“And then I get to drag you to my place for New Year’s?” Ed asked.

“Maybe,” Mike said with a smile.

Sapphire shook her head, and so did Lou Ellen, who was reading a book on her bunk. “They’re acting like we’re not even here.”

Lou Ellen rolled her eyes. “You and Leo are the same.”

Sapphire stood up. “Well, Jay and I will see you lovebirds on New Year’s, clear?”

“Crystal,” Ed replied. Mike nodded. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Sapphire said, before she and Jay shadow-travelled away.

They landed in her bedroom. The sounds of dinnertime came up through the floor. It was six or seven at night, Sapphire wasn’t totally sure because of Daylight Saving Time. Her stomach was telling her that it was almost time for lunch, and Jay’s body was telling him that it was time for an afternoon nap. He curled up on her bed and thought _‘It’s good to be home.’_ before going to sleep.

It sure was.


	15. Everyone XV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An alternate title for this chapter: The Narrator Elegantly Wraps Up Part One Without Any Characters Breaking the Fourth Wall to Complain

Neville was the only one who noticed that Nico had fainted. He hovered nervously over the downed demigod without a clue what to do while the other wizards yelled and shouts that were too loud to be understood came from the painting of Mrs. Black somewhere above them.

Somehow Nico still didn’t wake up.

Neville poked him in the arm. “Nico? Are you okay?” The demigod didn’t respond, and Neville poked him again. 

Everything except for Mrs. Black went silent when Nico jumped up and as fast as any of the wizards could blink pinned Neville to the wall with his wand at his throat.

Neville gurgled. Nico blinked.

“Oh,” Nico said shortly. “Sorry.”

He let go of Neville’s throat and the younger boy doubled over in a coughing fit. When he stood up he looked over at where Nico was now standing and his eyes widened. He reached for his own wand. “Sirius Black!”

Fred and George grabbed Neville’s arms.

“It’s alright, Neville old pal,” George said shakily.

“Yeah,” his twin agreed. “Sirius is a friend.”

“But…but…he’s a Death Eater!” Neville squeaked.

“No, I’m not,” Sirius drawled. “Though with all our popular media I can see why you would think so.”

Sirius stepped forwards and offered his hand to Nico. “Sirius Black, escaped prisoner of Azkaban, current prisoner of this lovely place. I would also like to add that I’m not a mass murderer.”

Nico shook his hand. “Nico Levesque, escaped prisoner of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with aid from the Headmaster of said school.” He didn’t add that Sirius wouldn’t have been the first mass murder that he’d met.

“American?” Sirius asked.

Nico shrugged. “Sort of.”

“Wonderful.” Sirius looked at Harry and the Weasleys. “Do you understand why we’re not going to the hospital?”

The children nodded, Ginny with angry tears running down her face.

“Good,” Sirius said. “Now, we’re all going to sit down and have some Butterbeer while we wait for news.”

* * *

Kreacher looked up as someone knocked on the door of his cupboard. “You is not Kreacher’s blood traitor Master. Go away.”

“Merry Christmas to you too,” Nico said with some amusement. “I brought you a gift. It’s a silver locket with a snake on the front, but if you don’t want it…”

Kreacher threw the cupboard door open. “What is mudblood Ghost King doing with Master Regulus’s locket?” he shouted in his deep, bullfrog voice.

Nico swung the locket back and forth like a pendulum with one finger. “Relax, Kreacher. Regulus told you to destroy this locket, didn’t he?”

Kreacher nodded reluctantly, following the progress of the locket with his eyes.

“Well, I can help you with that,” Nico said.

The demigod and the house-elf looked at each other.

“How?” Kreacher finally asked.

“By stabbing it with a magic sword.”

“Kreacher…will allow Ghost King to help him,” Kreacher said slowly. “Does Ghost King know how to open the locket?”

Nico smiled slowly. He put the locket down on the stone floor and drew his sword out of the shadows. “All I have to do is say _~open~_.”

He hissed the last word just as Ed had taught him and the locket blew open. The piece of soul in it bubbled out of its two halves and began to mould itself into vaguely human shapes. Before it could completely form, Nico swung his sword down.

The soul piece departed with a wail. The locket, now cut into two pieces, was left rattling in the floor. 

Kreacher stared up at the demigod in what seemed to be total awe. “Ghost King _has_ destroyed the locket.”

Nico put his sword away and bent down to pick up the two pieces of the locket. He turned them over in his palm. “Kreacher, can you get into Hogwarts?”

Kreacher nodded. “Kreacher can, Master Ghost King.”

“Would you put this in the Slytherin common room for me?” That was pretty close to where it really belonged, and it would give the school a shock.

Kreacher nodded. “Kreacher will do this for Master Ghost King. Can Kreacher help Master Ghost King with anything else?”

“Would you listen to Sirius and not get him killed?” Nico asked.

Kreacher made a face. “Kreacher…will think about it,” he promised, and then he took the offered locket and disappeared with a pop.

Well, that was probably the best answer he was going to get. Nico shook his head with a snort and headed upstairs to join the wizards of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, who were just waking up for Christmas morning.

* * *

“Hazel! Hazel, wake up!”

Hazel quickly pried her eyes open and looked around for the person who had snuck up on her. Then she realized that the person speaking wasn’t in the room but looking down at her from an Iris Message that was hovering over her bed. That made her feel so much better.

“Sapphire? It’s five in the morning.” And Christmas Day was the only day they were allowed to sleep in.

Sapphire wasn’t deterred by her half-sister’s grumpy face. That might have had something to do with the fact that it was eight o’clock in the morning for her. They were in different time zones. 

“Father contacted me. Nico’s destroyed the locket! We don’t have to go back!”

Hazel yawned. “That’s great. Tell me again when I’m actually awake?”

Sapphire laughed. “Sure. Merry Christmas. Goodnight!”

She cut off the IM before Hazel could remind her that it wasn’t nighttime, but that didn’t matter because the daughter of Pluto had already fallen back to sleep.

* * *

Leo carefully wrapped up the project in progress that was sitting out on the desk in his room. It was the last thing he had to pack and he had left himself plenty of time to do so to make sure that it wouldn’t get broken.

Will popped his head into Leo’s room just as he finished wrapping up his project and tucking it into his tool belt. “Have you finished packing yet?”

“Yes.” Leo indicated his locked trunk. “Are you always this impatient?”

“No.” Will rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “I just want to go home.”

Leo nodded in agreement. The huge castle had become downright claustrophobic. “The train leaves as soon as we get on. Let’s go now. Nico will be there, right?”

Will nodded. The son of Hades would definitely be there. He wanted to go home as much as they did, and him not feeling at home at Camp to start off with.

“Then let’s go,” Leo said. “Goodbye Hogwarts, these guys are going home!”


	16. Wizards XVI

By the end of the school year the exchange students were old news. A locket belonging to Salazar Slytherin was found in the Slytherin common room, Sirius Black was posthumously declared innocent, Voldemort was officially back, and Umbridge was booted out of Hogwarts.

The battle at the Ministry had left all of the members of the DA, even those who hadn’t participated in it, mentally exhausted, especially Harry. Those who had been at the Ministry were also physically exhausted, even after the two days break at home. Well, a break for everyone except for Harry. The Dursleys had given him as many chores as possible to make up for the fact that he’d be away for the rest of July.

The six who had been at the Ministry, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, and Luna Lovegood, were sharing a compartment on the train that had left from King’s Cross Station, Platform 8 2/3, at nine o’clock on the morning of July 3rd, 2015. The children were listless. Harry and Luna were staring out the window, Ron was reading one of his Martin Miggs magazines and yawning ever so often, Hermione had a tourist guide for New York open on her lap that Neville was also attempting to read, and Ginny was asleep.

“I think we’re here,” Luna said dreamily as the train began to slow down. “There are Grim Galumphers outside, and they’re very common in North America.”

Hermione sighed as she put her book away. “Luna…”

“Hold on, Hermione,” Harry said before she could say anything about Grim Galumphers not being real. “There’s a whole pack of…things outside.”

Everyone in the compartment, except for Ginny, crowded around the window to look at the giant, giant as in bigger than Hagrid, black dogs with glowing red eyes that were stalking the platform illuminated only by one flickering florescent light above a door that read “Office”.

“Wicked!” Ron exclaimed, suddenly filled with energy.

“But…but…What are they?” Hermione wanted to know.

“Grim Galumphers,” Luna said again. “Oh, look! There’s the Ghost King.”

“What?” the boys asked, craning their necks to look in the direction Luna had pointed.

“Who?” Hermione asked shrilly.

Luna shook Ginny awake so she wouldn’t miss the excitement. “Just watch,” she said knowingly.

A man dressed in black armour suddenly appeared on the platform in the middle of the pack of dogs. The dogs all turned to face him and growled. One leapt towards him, teeth bared.

From seemingly out of nowhere the man drew a black sword and swung it in an arch towards the dog. The entire watching train gasped.

The dog’s head evaporated into darkness as it fell to the ground. The man turned and glared at the other dogs through his skull shaped helm. They danced away, yelping, and disappeared.

Ron’s chin was practically touching the floor of the compartment. 

A few of the chaperoning professors disembarked and made their way towards the armoured man. The students stampeded off the train after them.

“Hello, Ghost King,” Luna greeted him with a smile as she somehow ended up at the front of the group. “Thank you for getting rid of the Grim Galumphers!”

The man blinked once. “You’re welcome,” he said. He had an American accent, obviously, but something else in his voice somehow reminded Harry of Nico Levesque. He turned to Professor Sinistra, who had been the first person off the train. “You’d better get to your portkeys fast. The hellhounds aren’t going to stay away forever.”

“Do you know why they were here?” Sinistra asked.

The man shrugged and the light flicked off completely. “You must have demigods on the train.”

The exclamations that followed this statement were apparently perfect cover for him to disappear in the same manner he’d arrived, because when the flickering light came back to life he was gone. A split second later a skinny wizard wearing rumpled semi-casual Muggle clothing came out of the office.

“So sorry I’m late,” he gasped. “Rampaging gryphon in imports. You’re the Hogwarts group?”

Professor McGonagall looked sternly at him over her glasses. The head of Gryffindor House and Deputy Head of Hogwarts was _not_ pleased to be visiting America when she should have been making preparations for the new first-years. “We are.”

The wizard nodded. “Okay, great. Come through here and I’ll get you your portkeys. The harpies will take care of your luggage.”

After seeing the hellhounds and the Ghost King no one even bothered commenting on harpies. Most of them were still picking their lower jaws up off the ground.

The wizard, a Mr. John White, ushered them into the office, which was really the Union Station of international transport for the wizarding world of the eastern United States. The main hall that they entered was similar to the Ministry atrium. It was lined with fireplaces that constantly had people stepping out of them and there was a huge fountain in the middle of the hall that depicted hundreds of different magical creatures holding a golden globe aloft.

Mr. White led them into a room off the hall whose nameplate called it “National Portkeys, Departures and Arrivals”. The room was quite full thanks to the start of summer vacations. Families were landing on the arrivals side and spun away on the departures side, ushered about by transport-wizards in a smooth dance that ran like a well-oiled machine. They piled into a corner of the room that had been cordoned off with two hovering sheets that had a piece of paper with “Hogwarts” written on it pinned to each one.

“Here we are.” Mr. White pulled aside one of the sheets so that they could enter and they stepped into a temporarily expanded space that comfortably held their entire group. He then picked up a bag that was waiting for them and passed it around. “No more than four to a portkey. Be sure to hold on tight. Close your eyes if you feel nauseous.”

“Any tips for landing on your feet?” Professor Hooch joked.

Mr. White looked at her oddly. “No more than four to a portkey,” he repeated. “It keeps them stable. Is it not like that in Britain? I’ve only had this job a week so…”

Harry reached into the bag when it was passed to him by Fay Dunbar and was surprised when he pulled out a fresh green leaf. He looked around and saw that everyone with a portkey was holding some sort of natural object, be it a leaf, pine-cone, or piece of bark.

“Aren’t portkeys supposed to be made of junk?” Ron asked loudly.

Mr. White shook his head. “All portkeys have to be biodegradable when possible.”

Ron frowned. “Bye-oh-dee what?”

Mr. White bit his lip and looked at his watch. “Portkeys are leaving in one minute. Make sure you’re touching one, and only one. We don’t need anyone getting split in half.”

One minute later, Harry felt the familiar tug behind his navel as the portkey he was sharing with Ron, Hermione and Ginny activated. They spun through the air and landed with a thump on green grass. As promised, everyone landed on their feet. The four of them dropped their leaf and turned with everyone else to watch Professor McGonagall take several steps forwards towards a grey tree that was completely leafless even though it was summer. It was also the only tree in the otherwise empty field that they had landed in.

“Of course they’re late,” Blaise Zabini said with his lip curling. Astoria Greengrass sniffed. The other three houses could only assume that the parents of the five Slytherins there had forced them to come, because none of them looked particularly happy or excited. Professor Burbage hissed at the members of her old house who were showing disrespect.

“Actually, buddy, you’re early.”

Several of the wizards jumped as a man spoke from where there hadn’t been anyone before. Like the Ghost King he was dressed in armour over Muggle jeans and an orange T-shirt, though his was bronze rather than black. He carried no visible weapon, but the people backing him did and the wizards gulped at the sight of the wicked swords on display. 

“Fortunately, so are we,” said a woman who was dressed in armour just like the Ghost King’s. She carried two curved swords and she was looking at the wizards through her helm was like she was trying to decide which of them to sharpen them on first.

Professor McGonagall said, completely unfazed, “We’re supposed to meet someone named Percy Jackson.”

“That’s me,” the man said.

He took off his helmet, revealing tousled black hair and sea green eyes that twinkled in the sunlight. He tucked the helmet under one arm, stepped forwards, and held his free hand out to Professor McGonagall. “Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, hero of Olympus, etcetera. I’d say ‘nice to meet you’, but my wife told me only to lie to monsters.”

A few groans came from the other people, other demigods, standing behind him.

“You could try to be polite, Percy,” a woman dressed in leather armour said with a heavy accent that wasn’t American.

“No, he couldn’t,” the first woman said.

Professor McGonagall, still unfazed though now with her lips tightly pursed, shook Percy Jackson’s hand. “Under different circumstances, Mister Jackson, I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Snap!” two of the demigods said in unison.

“Same here,” Percy Jackson admitted. “Your luggage has already been dropped off at the guest house so we can start with tours, unless you’re too tired. I mean, we just had breakfast but you’ve been travelling for hours.”

McGonagall conversed with the other three professors for a moment before saying, “Tours now would be fine, Mister Jackson.”

Percy Jackson nodded and turned around to walk back to the other demigods. He turned to the woman in black armour. “Sapphire, would you…?”

“Sure, Percy,” the woman said.

Her name was Sapphire like the American girl who’d ended up in Slytherin? Well, Jackson’s name was Percy like Percy Weasley so that wasn’t so strange.

Sapphire took a piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. “Okay, people, I’m supposed to let all of you into Camp but my brother mentioned that some of you may be demigods, so when I call your name I want you to attempt to enter Camp. Clear?” 

“Your brother is the Ghost King?” Ron blurted out before anyone else could beat him to it.

“Didn’t I mention that? Sapphire Banks, daughter of Hades and Persephone, sister of the Ghost King, cashier at the Camp Half-Blood store.” She gave a little bow and continued, “My brother says I should add ‘Harley Quinn impersonator’ but my boyfriend’s definitely not the Joker.”

The pure-blood and half-blood wizards blinked in confusion.

“You lost them, Sapphire,” the woman in leather armour said with a shake of her head. “Just read the list or we’ll be here until lunch.”

“As you wish, Princess Leila.”

“Get on with it, Quinn,” ‘Princess’ Leila shot back.

A few of the demigods laughed as Banks began reading from the piece of paper. “Let’s go with youngest first. Colin Creevey?”

Colin’s hand shot up into the air. “Present!”

“Please step forward and attempt to cross the border,” Banks said.

Dennis looked slightly confused, but he hurried to the front of the crowd and stopped next to McGonagall. “Now what?” he asked.

“Attempt to cross the border,” Banks repeated.

Colin frowned. “How will I know when I reach it?”

“You’ll know. Just keep walking forwards.”

Colin inched forwards. Once he’d taken two steps and not burst into flames or something similar he grew bolder and walked quickly towards the group of demigods. About two feet from Percy Jackson his noise flattened like he had it pressed against a wall and he fell onto his bum. “Oof!”

Most of the demigods giggled.

“And that’s a no,” Banks said. “I, Sapphire Banks, give Colin Creevey permission to enter Camp Half-Blood.”

“Whoa,” Colin said, and he froze in the middle of getting up. He was looking past the demigods at the empty valley behind them.

“Why are all the trees like that?” he asked.

“They’re all dead,” Banks replied. “No dryads.”

“Is that bad?”

“The trees are dead, aren’t they?”

“Miss Banks, what have you done to my student?” McGonagall asked harshly.

“Nothing, professor,” Banks said in a British accent that made McGonagall look at her icily through her glasses, sure that she was being mocked. Banks shook her head violently. “Sorry, professor,” she said with her normal accent. “Could you try to cross the border, please?”

McGonagall was still annoyed, but she did as the young woman asked. When she came up against the same invisible wall Colin had bounced off of she shook her head.

“I, Sapphire Banks, give Minerva McGonagall permission to enter Camp Half- Blood,” Banks said solemnly.

“Oh my,” Professor McGonagall gasped. Her eyes widened.

Banks looked like she was smiling behind her helm. “This isn’t even the best part of Camp, professor. May I continue?”

“You most certainly may,” Professor McGonagall said.

Banks called the wizards up one by one. Most of them bounced off the boarder, some of them in spectacular ways that had even the wizards laughing. Then Fay Dunbar was called, and she walked right into Banks because she expected to be stopped by the invisible wall.

“Sorry, sorry!” Fay squeaked.

“It’s alright,” Banks said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present our first demigod wizard! That we know of anyway. Leila will take care of you for now, Fay.”

“She’s a _demigod_!” Ron exclaimed while Fay nervously went to stand beside Leila, the woman in leather armour. “But that means her parents—”

“Are you just figuring this out now, Ronald Weasley?” Banks asked. “Why don’t you try to get into Camp? I can promise you won’t have any success.”

“How did she know who he is?” Hermione whispered to Harry while Ron tried and, as predicted, failed to get into Camp Half-Blood. Harry shrugged.

“Daphne Greengrass,” Banks called.

The beautiful blond Slytherin girl walked away from her housemates with her nose practically perpendicular with the ground. When she failed to be stopped at the tree, which the wizards had come to realize was just outside the border of the camp, her steps faltered. She took a few more steps and a look of horror flickered briefly over her face before she showed nothing but cool indifference.

“Another demigod wizard,” Banks said. “I wouldn’t have expected a Slytherin but—”

Banks stopped talking and everyone could see her mouth drop open. She stared above Daphne’s head, where even the wizards outside the border could see a glowing sun hovering. The sun’s golden light enveloped Daphne and when it faded she was left holding a golden bow in her left hand.

“All hail Daphne Greengrass,” Percy Jackson said at last. “Daughter of Apollo.”


	17. Sapphire XVII

Out of the one hundred wizards, only Fay and Daphne were demigods. That was probably a good thing since the pure-blood Ice Queen of Slytherin turned daughter of Apollo would be more than enough for them to deal with.

While Sapphire called out the last few names, Malcolm and Percy were debating in Ancient Greek about how they were going to run the tours. No one really wanted to get between the son of Poseidon and his brother-in-law, so it took until Sapphire called the last name, Katie Bell, for them to make a decision.

“Okay,” Percy said as soon as everyone had crossed the border. “We’re going to split you up into four groups with a teacher for each one. Then those groups are going to be split into groups of six with a demigod for each group. Those are the groups you’re going to be in for the tour.” He looked at Malcolm, who nodded. “So, choose partners or something,” Percy finished.

The Golden Trio immediately moved to stand near Ginny, Neville, and Luna. The five Slytherins bunched together, but Kayla dragged Daphne away. “You’re with me, sis. Think of it as getting the behind -the-scenes tour.”

Fay was also stuck with a behind-the-scenes tour with Leila serving as her guide.

While the wizards were scrambling to make groups, the demigods also split up into groups of four to act as guides. The demigod groups formed a perimeter around the wizards so they could be on guard for anything that might come out of the Dead Woods while the wizards were being decidedly not on guard. Sapphire rolled her eyes as there was still nothing living in the Dead Woods, but she joined them without saying anything.

“Okay!” Percy shouted eventually. “Professor McGonagall, your group can go with Mike, Malcolm, Sapphire, and Ed.”

“I want the Golden Trio,” Sapphire and Mike said in unison as McGonagall picked Harry’s group to go with her.

Ed sighed. “Rock-paper-scissors,” he told Sapphire and Mike.

Sapphire won. She grinned at Mike as Percy matched up the rest of the groups. “Nice try,” she told him.

The demigods began leading the wizards out of the Dead Woods and into Camp Half-Blood proper. They spread out a bit so that the groups didn’t have to try to listen to four different tour narrations at once.

“If you go a bit further that way you’ll be near the Ant Hill. Don’t do that, you’ll die.”

“You won’t be allowed into the woods without an armed camper with you. It’s too dangerous otherwise.”

“The woods are stocked with monsters. Hunting them is a great way to relieve stress.”

“We play Capture the Flag here every week.”

The groups split up after they left the woods. Professor Hooch’s group went to the climbing wall, beach and amphitheatre, Professor Sinistra’s group went towards the stables, the strawberry fields and the temple, Professor Burbage’s group, which had the four Slytherins in it, headed for the cabins, canoe lake and arts and crafts pavilion, and Professor McGonagall’s group got to go to the armoury, forges and arena.

They were going to have fun with that.

They would switch locations around of course, but Sapphire, Mike, Malcolm, and Ed would be the first to try to freak out the wizards.

Mrs. O'Leary was at the arena.

Most of the wizards screamed as soon as they saw her.

“That’s a hellhound!” Ron shouted.

“Yeah,” Sapphire said with a shrug. “She’s Percy’s pet. Mrs. O’Leary!”

The hellhound’s ears perked up and she came barrelling across the arena, nearly stampeding a few members of the Iris cabin who were practising spear fighting. She stopped in front of Sapphire and let out a little bark that was as loud as a cannon blast.

“Good to see you too, girl,” Sapphire said.

Mrs. O’Leary tilted her head and batted gently at Sapphire’s helmet. Sapphire took it off and tossed it into her shadow, transporting it back to her cabin, and Mrs. O’Leary bent down so that Sapphire could scratch her behind her ears.

“You can’t say Percy’s been neglecting you,” she chided. “Sure he’s been busy, but he’s been down to see you twice a day.”

Mrs. O’Leary barked again and bounded away to frighten Malcolm’s group of wizards.

When Sapphire turned back to her group they gasped. “What?” she demanded, even though she knew exactly what they were gasping at.

“What happened to your face?” Ron blurted. Harry stamped on his foot and Hermione elbowed him. “Merlin’s pants!” he exclaimed, hopping on one foot and rubbing his side at the same time. “One of those is enough!”

“Good to know,” Hermione said. 

“A stupid boy,” Sapphire replied. Her lips curled. “He’s in the Fields of Punishment now and my father’s promised that I get to kill him if I want to. I don’t really want to now, but it’s nice to have the option.” 

“How old are you?” Hermione asked with a scandalized tone.

“Six, no, seventeen,” Sapphire said. “My birthday was a few days ago.”

Hermione and Ginny now both looked scandalized, Luna looked sad, and the boys looked everywhere between slightly scared (Harry) and terrified (Neville).

Sapphire sighed. “Oh come on! Despite appearances, we don’t actually want people killed.” If Asher hurt anyone else though, all bets were off.

The wizards didn’t exactly look reassured so, sighing again, Sapphire twisted the skull at the end of Swift Death’s hilt and it shrank down into its ring form. “Look,” she said as she slipped on her ring, “no weapons. Relax, would you?”

Rather than relaxing, Hermione gasped again. “Your necklace!”

“What about it?” Sapphire asked.

“It…you…” Sapphire realized what Hermione had realized a split second before she said it. “You’re Sapphire Levesque!”

Sapphire smiled. “Guilty.” She turned to yell across the arena to Mike, “Mike, you own me three drachmas!”

Mike replied by swearing in Ancient Greek and got Ed to walk over and hit him on the back of the head for his trouble. 

“He lost our bet,” Sapphire explained, turning back to Hermione. “He bet it would take you at least a day to figure it out.”

“What did he say?” Harry wondered.

Sapphire smiled at him. “Nothing I’m going to repeat with McGonagall around. She was my favourite professor and I’d like not to make a bad second impression.”

“If you’re Sapphire Levesque,” Hermione thought out loud, “Ed must be Edgar Zhang. And the Ghost King is…Nico Levesque?”

“Yup,” Sapphire said. “Do you want me to leave you to figure the rest of us out, or should I tell you?”

“Just leave it,” Harry suggested. “It’ll give her something to do.”

“Hey!” Hermione protested.

“Why do you look different?” Neville asked.

“Magic,” Sapphire said. “Mike’s a son of Hecate.”

“Cool,” Ginny said.

“What about Ed and Malcolm?” Hermione asked.

“Hermes and Athena,” Sapphire said. “Shall we get back to the tour? Like I said, this is the arena. This is where any challenges take place and most combat training. The archery range isn’t in the area though, for obvious reasons.”

“Obvious reasons?” Ginny whispered.

“So people don’t get hit by arrows,” Luna told her.

“Luna’s right,” Sapphire said.

Ginny jumped, probably because she thought Sapphire hadn’t heard her.

“Percy managed to fire an arrow backwards once,” Sapphire continued. “If you run into Annabeth, that’s his wife, she’s the head of the Athena cabin, ask her to tell you about it.” It was a hilarious story that involved Will, the harpies, and a lakefull of water materializing out of thin air.

Sapphire continued the tour, moving on to the armoury when Malcolm signalled that it was time. The wizards looked all around as they moved, staring with wide eyes at some of the people they passed. 

“What happened to these people?” Ron asked at last, looking specifically at Malcolm, who had removed most of his armour and was now showing off the faint burn scars and obvious missing eye he’d received the previous summer. Hermione elbowed Ron again since it was a little hard to stamp on someone’s foot while you were both walking.

“A war,” Malcolm said bitterly.

“Then another war,” Mike continued with a sigh.

“And monster attacks before, after, and in between,” Sapphire finished. “Oh look, we’re here.”

They went into the armoury one group at a time. Harry’s eyes widened behind his glasses when he got his first look at the inside. He immediately went to a rack of swords hanging on the wall. “This looks like the sword of Gryffindor!”

“It’s a replica,” Sapphire told him. “Mike made it when he was bored.”

“What’s this one?” Ginny asked. “It’s all bent.”

“That’s a _khopesh_ ,” Sapphire said. “Leo made it last summer.”

“Leo Mason?” Hermione guessed.

“Leo Valdez,” Sapphire corrected, smiling. “My boyfriend.”

“Where did Mason come from?” Hermione asked.

Sapphire’s face fell. “His brother. Half-brother. He died in the last war.”

“And Zhang?” Hermione asked quietly.

“Hazel’s boyfriend. He’s still alive. And her name is actually Levesque.”

Ron was looking at a table half full of guns. “What are these?”

“Guns,” Sapphire said.

Ron looked confused. “Those metal wands that Muggles use to kill each other?”

“Sure…They also work on monsters, when modified. The Hephaestus and Apollo cabins have fun with that.”

“These cabins you keep mentioning,” Hermione said.

“Will be explained when we get to them,” Sapphire promised Hermione. “Come on, forges next.”

When they got to the forges, Malcolm, Mike and Ed looked pointedly at Sapphire. “I know, I know,” she muttered. She stepped inside the building and almost immediately something blew up in her face. She stepped back outside covered in a layer of soot and shook her head.

“We’ll skip the forges then,” Malcolm decided.

“What are they working on?” Mike asked. He, Malcolm, and Ed looked at Sapphire again.

Sapphire shrugged. “The fireworks for tomorrow? I don’t know, Leo won’t tell me.”

“That’s great,” Malcolm said. “Let’s go to the cabins.”


	18. Wizards XVIII

When they reached the cabins, which were arranged in the shape of the Greek letter omega according to Sapphire, Hermione wished that she had about ten more eyes.

“Every god with a demigod child has a cabin,” Sapphire narrated, “except for ladies Hera, Artemis, and Amphitrite. Their cabins are symbolic because Hera and Amphitrite don’t have children with anyone except their husbands and Artemis is a virgin goddess.”

Hermione tore herself away from staring at everything to ask, “Isn’t Athena a virgin goddess? How does she have kids?”

Sapphire rolled her eyes towards the sky. “Her children are literally made from thoughts. Please don’t ask me to explain how.”

Hermione really wanted to ask her to explain how, but she managed to keep her mouth shut.

Sapphire pointed towards a cabin near the end of one side of the omega that was clad in black stone and had a torch burning with green fire on either side of the door. Black curtains were drawn over the inside of the windows and there were various animal bones on the windowsills, but the cabin somehow managed to look homey, in a scary sort of way. 

“That’s the cabin where I usually live. Hades cabin, number thirteen, home of the children of the god of the dead. All of the odd numbered cabins are the male gods’ cabins. Even numbers are the goddesses’, except for Cabin Twelve. That’s Dionysus’ and it’s a holdover from when we only had twelve cabins. ”

Hermione looked more closely up the line of cabins. She had been quite stunned by the wonderfully absurd buildings that looked like something that even wizards couldn’t have built. On the gods’ side her eyes were drawn to a cabin clad entirely in gold that was shining brightly in the sunlight. It hurt to look at it for more than a few seconds so she quickly began studying the other cabins. She was looking at a black marble cabin on the goddesses’ side, trying to figure out which goddess it belonged to, when someone said her name. She turned around and saw Sapphire looking at her with an amused smile.

“And I thought you were the attentive one,” Sapphire laughed.

Hermione felt her face going red. “I-I, sorry!” she squeaked. “It’s just that…”

“The architecture?” Sapphire suggested. “Don’t worry you didn’t miss much, just a warning not to go near the Ares cabin until you learn where the land mines are, which will be never since you’re only here for a few weeks.”

Land mines?

“Which one is the Ares cabin?” Ron asked.

Sapphire pointed to the red splattered cabin that Hermione had already guessed was the Ares cabin. “And look out for the Aphrodite cabin too. Piper keeps them mostly under control but her siblings do have a tendency to go a bit wild when there’s fresh meat around.”

Fresh meat?

“Sorry, new people,” Sapphire edited when McGonagall gave her a stern look. “Who wants to meet a goddess?”

* * *

The goddess was a nine year old girl.

Sapphire led them towards the fire pit that Hermione was ninety percent sure was perfectly equidistant from all of the cabins. Kneeling next to it was a girl who was carefully feeding the fire with wood that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Hermione thought that she was probably transfiguring it out of blades of grass or something like that.

Despite the summer heat and the fire she was sitting at, the girl was wearing a full brown robe with a hood that was pulled so far forward that it left her face in shadow. To the pure-blood wizards she was the most normal person they had seen since they arrived.

“Is _she_ the goddess?” Ginny asked Hermione quietly as they approached. 

Hermione shrugged and shook her head. She had done a little reading up on the Greek gods after the first trip information seminar, a little when compared to her usual amounts of research due to the whole Umbridge mess, a lot for anyone else who wasn’t a Ravenclaw, and she couldn’t remember reading about any gods who were children.

The girl looked up when Sapphire stopped by the fire. She smiled and her eyes glowed brighter.

Her eyes were made of fire.

Her _eyes_ were made of _fire_.

Alright, Hermione thought, now I’ve seen everything.

“Sapphire,” the fire-eyed girl said. “It’s nice to see you.”

Sapphire crouched down so that she was level with the girl. “Sorry Lady, Auntie Hestia. All the head counselors have been really busy so…”

The girl was _Hestia_?!

Hermione blinked in surprise. She was wrong, _now_ she had seen everything.

Hestia nodded. “And these are some of our guests, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Harry Potter, and Ronald and Ginevra Weasley.” Hestia looked straight at Ron and Ginny when she said their names and smiled. “I’m a big fan of your mother’s work.”

Ron and Ginny just blinked and weren’t able to say anything. Hermione would have congratulated Hestia for being able to get Ron to shut up but she was also tongue-tied.

“I think they’re wondering how you know their names,” Sapphire said. She looked across the fire at the wizards. “She’s a goddess.”

“But she’s a little girl!” Ron exclaimed. “Ow! Hermione!”

Hermione had elbowed him _and_ stepped on his foot.

Sapphire grinned. “If you were talking about Artemis she’d have turned you into a jackalope by now! The gods can take any human form they like. Lord Zeus is the only god who can take any form, because reasons, and some gods, like Thanatos, have standard forms that are partially animal. The only other visible forms gods can take aside from human that we know of are their sacred animals.”

“What about invisible forms?” Neville asked nervously, looking around.

“Fully godly form, which is only invisible because seeing it will kill you,” Sapphire explained.

Neville blanched and Harry didn’t look much better.

Sapphire sighed and backtracked. “It doesn’t happen very often, and the gods who go supernova a lot don’t come by here much. You won’t have to worry about it at all, unless you make Mr. D mad. And he’s more likely to strangle you with grape vines.”

That was not helpful.

“I think we’re going to the canoe lake now,” Sapphire said, jumping up. “See you later, Auntie Hestia.”

* * *

Hermione sat down hard on the couch in the common room of the guest house they would be staying in. The room was almost as amazing as the rest of the camp, but she wasn’t paying any attention to the décor. She buried her face in her hands and sighed. “How in Merlin’s name are we going to get them to help us?” she asked Harry and Ron.

The demigods didn’t care what happened to them. That was the impression Hermione had gotten during the tour. Sure their tour guides had become less hostile as they went along but the number of times they had said the word “die” did not bode well for their safely during this trip. Other demigods had glared and tightened grips on weapons as they passed, and some had made a hand sign that looked like something a Muggle would do to ward off the so-called “evil eye”.

Even Ron noticed that they weren’t exactly being welcomed with open arms, though his complaints only started when Sapphire had mentioned that lunch wasn’t for another hour.

From what Hermione could gather, the demigods had fought and won two wars. They were professional warriors! It was no wonder that Dumbledore wanted them to help them fight Voldemort. There were a lot of demigods who were children, but Dumbledore definitely wouldn’t expect them to fight. The only problem was that most of the demigods looked like they’d rather go up their climbing wall, a terrifying structure that spewed lava, experienced earthquakes, and tried to crush the people climbing it, a hundred times than help the wizards with anything important.

So, Hermione, Harry and Ron had to figure out how to work around that, and their chances were not looking good. 

Harry however had a different question. “If Sapphire’s dad is the god of the dead, could she bring Sirius back?”


	19. Nico XIX

This was going to be an interesting summer, Nico decided, and he was using the demigod definition of interesting, which included a high possibility of explosions.

All of the campers were already waiting in the dining pavilion when Percy and Annabeth led the wizards in. Well, not _all_ of the campers. It didn’t really feel right that Mark was leading the Ares cabin rather than Clarisse, and Chris was living with her and Lina, their daughter, in Manhattan. A few of the other older campers were in New Rome taking summer classes, mostly Athena kids, not to mention all the campers who’d opted out of auditioning to fight in the Second Wizarding War. Still, there were several hundred campers seated in the pavilion, all with weapons visible. With the central fire burning brightly in the bathtub sized bronze brazier and the torches on the columns giving everyone tall shadows and the tables perfectly set with jewelled goblets and metal plates, the overall effect was definitely impressive. 

Nico was sitting at one end of the Apollo table with Will, Jason, and Leo. Leo was giving a devilish grin that he had to have learned from either Sapphire or Nico. Probably Sapphire.

“This is going to be fun,” Leo said.

“Definitely,” Sapphire agreed from the other end of the Apollo table. 

“Let’s try not to have _too_ much fun,” Will reminded them. “My dad would like them to all live through this, and I think Lady Hecate would also prefer they remain alive.”

Mike Morgan wrinkled his nose. “He’s not wrong,” the son of Hecate grudgingly admitted. 

“Killjoy,” Nico muttered.

Annabeth gestured towards the brazier and told the wizards, “Every time you eat you have to sacrifice some of the food to the gods. We all sacrifice to our godly parents but you could sacrifice to Hecate or Hermes, or any other god you want.”

“They have to be Greek gods though,” Percy added. “The brazier would probably explode otherwise.”

Wouldn’t that be something to see?

Since they were guests, Annabeth directed the wizards to get their food from the buffet the nymphs had prepared first. They hesitated until Ginny Weasley boldly stepped forwards, filled her plate, and scrapped half of it into the brazier.

“For Hestia,” she said.

The fire happily shot up about a foot as Ginny stepped back out of eyebrow burning range. The rest of the wizards cautiously followed Ginny’s lead with most of them sacrificing their food to Hecate or Hermes, though a few Muggle-borns named who Nico assumed was their favourite Greek god.

Zeus was going to be happy.

Annabeth had definitely given the wizards more instructions before they arrived because they didn’t all sit at the same table after they had sacrificed their food. Well, the Slytherins all sat at the one empty table, the Zeus table, but the other wizards scattered themselves among the waiting demigods. 

Surprisingly, none of them sat at the Aphrodite table, even though Piper was keeping all her siblings on a tight leash.

Trying to keep all her siblings on a tight leash. Nico thought getting them to all sit at the same table was probably the most she’d be able to do.

Harry looked around and, as predicted by most of the head counselors, chose a seat around the middle of the Apollo table with Nico close to his right and Sapphire a little further to his left. Ron followed him with slight hesitation. Hermione sat across from them, choosing to favour Sapphire’s side of the table a bit more.

She sat between Leo and Sapphire though, which was probably not a good idea.

“Hey!” Katie Gardner called as Neville neared the Demeter table, where she was sitting with her sisters Maranda Gardiner, Billie Ng, a few of their other siblings and Will’s sister, Kayla.

Neville froze and Luna bumped into his back. She somehow managed to keep hold of her full plate and recovered with a graceful spin.

“You’re Neville Longbottom, right?” Katie asked.

Neville nodded stiffly. Katie grinned. “I’m Katie Gardner, daughter of Demeter. Do you want to sit with us? I hear you’re good at Herbology.”

“Uh, sure,” Neville said. He sat down beside Billie. Luna looked over the table and sat down opposite him, next to Kayla.

After the demigods had gotten their food, Chiron stamped his hoof up at the front table to get their attention. “Campers,” he began, “today we mark the arrival of our guests, the students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and their teachers, Professors McGonagall, Sinistra, Burbage and Hooch. Please give them a warm welcome and treat them as you would any of our new campers.”

“He shouldn’t have said that,” Jason muttered as the demigods broke into scattered applause.

The Ares kids grinned at each other.

“We also have three new campers,” Chiron continued. “Daphne Greengrass, daughter of Apollo, Maria Ortiz, daughter of Ares, and Fay Dunbar, unclaimed.”

Chiron started applauding and was quickly followed by the campers and, grudgingly, Mr. D. Nico looked sideways to where Fay was sitting next to Leila. She was blushing while Daphne kept her face blank and Maria Ortiz glared at everyone who looked at her, especially boys.

“Can we eat now?” Mr. D complained. “We get enough ceremony at dinner.”

Chiron gave a sigh that Mr. D either didn’t notice or pretended not to see. “Enjoy your lunch.”

The pavilion was immediately filled with chatter.

Hermione put on a smile. “It’s very nice here,” she said.

“We know,” all of the demigods at the Apollo table replied.

“ ‘e er my knee,” Ron said through his mouthful of brisket.

That was probably translated as “Eat, Hermione,” as Hermione gave Ron a disapproving look as she picked up her fork. Harry laughed at his friends and choked on a bite of cornbread. Nico pounded him on the back.

“Is there any water?” Harry asked hoarsely.

Nico nodded. “Water, please,” he told Harry’s goblet before helping him to take a few sips.

“Do you know what type of activities we’re going to be doing?” Hermione asked once Harry was no longer in danger.

Sapphire shrugged. “Oh, just the usual summer camp stuff.”

“Canoeing, rock climbing, sword fighting, archery, wrestling, weapons making,” Percy listed as he and Annabeth came to sit with them. “Move over, Superman.”

Jason rolled his eyes and moved over.

“You forgot Capture the Flag,” Ed said quietly.

Sapphire laughed. “I hope none of us think that’s a good idea.”

Ed grinned. “Nope.”

Percy pouted. “I thought it was a good idea.”

Annabeth hit the back of his head. Percy flinched. “Ow. Metal hand,” he complained.

“Why wouldn’t Capture the Flag be a good idea?” Harry asked. “I’ve heard about it. It doesn’t seem very dangerous unless my cousin’s playing.”

“All weapons and powers allowed,” Leo replied simply, and then he set his ears on fire, which made him really look like an elf. 

Hermione yelped and nearly fell out of her seat.

“No pyrotechnics during meals, Vertes,” Mr. D yelled. 

“Sorry, sir!” Leo grinned and the small fires were snuffed out. Sapphire giggled and Jason shook his head with a smile.

_“I think that’s enough,”_ Sapphire said in Ancient Greek. She stood up and started heading towards the table where the dirty dishes were being stacked up. Harry suddenly sat up and grabbed her arm.

“Hey!” Sapphire and Nico exclaimed. Leo just glared, though that was probably because his mouth was full of cornbread.

Leila grabbed Harry’s wrist tightly and pulled his hand away from Sapphire. “Watch where you put your hand or lose it,” she threatened before letting go.

Harry rubbed his wrist and looked quickly between Sapphire and Nico. “Sorry! But I have to ask you, with your dad, can you bring someone back to life?”

The entire pavilion went silent. Harry looked around and probably just realized that he had been yelling. Hermione looked at him disapprovingly and Ron stared at him like he had antlers growing out of his head.

Sapphire looked at Nico and raised an eyebrow. _“Should we tell him? It’ll screw up the timeline.”_

_“Are we heartless?”_ Nico retaliated.

_“My_ ib _is firmly in place, thank you very much.”_ Sapphire turned to Harry and said, “Yes. Why?”

Harry opened and closed his mouth a few times before responding. He looked like a fish. “My godfather—”

“Sirius Black?” Nico interrupted.

Harry nodded sadly.

“He’s not dead,” Nico said.

Harry proceeded to do his fish impression again.

“But…but…He fell through the Veil!” Hermione said. “It’s…it’s the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead! It’s a one way trip.”

Nico was willing to bet that she was quoting that from a book.

“Not if you use a different exit,” Jason guessed.

Nico nodded. “Sirius is in the Underworld, but he isn’t dead.” He looked at Sapphire and pulled shadows towards him in preparation.

Sapphire sighed. “I guess I’m missing weapons making.”

Behind Sapphire's back, Leo looked uncommonly relieved by that prospect. Jason elbowed him.

“Give us a few hours,” Nico told Harry. “We’ll see what we can do.”


	20. Wizards XX

The Unspeakables could be forgiven for thinking that the Veil caused instant death. It was, after all, a portal to the Underworld where wizards who were thrown through it were usually killed after they made Hades mad one too many times.

Sirius Black was different.

He could play chess.

“Check.” Sirius grinned and sat back in his chair while Hades examined the chess board. The king of the Underworld moved his remaining knight and captured the bishop that was threatening his king.

“Checkmate,” Hades countered.

Sirius sighed. His stomach growled.

Hades smirked. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to eat?”

“I’m sure,” Sirius said. “I did listen to Lily sometimes.”

With being one of the first Gryffindor-Muggle-born-girls-who-should-have-been-Ravenclaws, Lily enjoyed telling her classmates about things she had read, which included Muggle mythology. Besides, Sirius had survived Azkaban. Compared to that, the Underworld was a walk in the park.

“Smart man,” Hades quipped as he reset the chessboard. “It’s your move…wait.” The god tilted his head like he was listening for something. “We may have to cut this game short. My children have come to visit.”

Sirius gulped. “Which ones?” He wasn’t entirely sure, but meeting the immortal children of Hades sounded like a bad idea. Heck, meeting _any_ child of Hades sounded like a bad idea.

Hades smiled. “Nico and Sapphire.”

Sirius blinked. “Nico Levesque?” he asked, as that was the first Nico to come to mind.

“Nico _di Angelo_ ,” Hades corrected irritably. “Your move.”

Sirius shut up and made his move.

About ten minutes into their game the doors of the throne room blew open. A boy and a girl walked in, both of them sheathing swords at their sides.

“Hi, Dad,” the boy, who likely was Nico di Angelo, said gruffly.

“Hello, Father. Melinoe tried to kill us,” the girl, who was probably Sapphire, said with a smile, “with zombies. I’m going to have a breakdown later.”

Okay, Sirius though, that wasn’t normal. Then again he was a wizard in the Underworld playing chess with the lord of the dead. Normal didn’t apply.

“I’ll talk to her,” Hades promised with a sigh.

“Thank you,” Sapphire said brightly. She stepped closer and enough light fell onto her face to illuminate an awful scar that wouldn’t have been out of place on Mad-Eye Moody. She tilted her head and looked at Sirius. “Is this Sirius Black? The one that’s Harry Potter’s godfather, not the other one.”

“This is Sirius, Sapphire,” Nico said smoothly as he pushed his sister behind him.

“I know it’s serious,” Sapphire complained. “We have to find him and convince Father to let us take him.”

Sirius wasn’t sure if she was making a joke. If she was, it was a joke that had gotten old a long time ago

Hades raised an eyebrow at his son. “So you have come to bring him back to the world of the living?”

Nico nodded. “Yes, Father, if you’ll allow it, and he hasn’t eaten anything.”

Sirius’s stomach gave a helpful growl. When Sapphire leaned around her brother and raised an eyebrow at him he just shrugged. They were talking about food, what was his digestive system supposed to do?

Hades sighed. “I enjoyed having _someone_ to play chess with.”

“Ask Thanatos,” Sapphire suggested helpfully, “or Hermes.”

Hades waved his hand. “Go. Take him, before I change my mind.”

“Thank you, Daddy!” Sapphire chirped.

Hades gave Sapphire a pained look. “Go!”

Nico dragged Sapphire alongside him as he hurried towards Sirius and grabbed his arm. “Infirmary,” he told Sapphire clearly.

Sapphire nodded. Without any further warning, Sirius was hit by a wall of darkness that rushed past at the top speed of a Firebolt. His ears were filled with rushing winds and shrill screams. All he could feel was the ice cold winds battering his body and Nico’s equally cold hand in a vice grip around his forearm.

Then it stopped.

“What have I told you about shadow travelling in here?” a boy shouted.

Sirius blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden excess of light. The adjustment took quite a while as practically the entire room was blinding white.

“Only in an emergency,” Nico replied. “It’s an emergency.”

The big blurry dark shape that Sirius assumed was the boy that Nico was talking to moved towards them. “Yeah, it’s an emergency,” he agreed after a moment. “You go get whoever you have to get and I’ll keep an eye on them.”

Sirius lost his point of reference as Nico let go of his arm and, he assumed, left the room. A door slammed, cutting through the background noise, and Sirius stumbled as Sapphire jumped and ended up elbowing him. The boy caught his arm and helped him sit down.

“Hi, I’m Will Solace. You’re Sirius Black, right? Can you see me?” the boy asked Sirius.

“That depends,” Sirius said. “Do you normally look like a Lethifold?”

“I’m going to take that as a no,” Will muttered. “Austin, can you bring him some eye-aid and carrot juice?”

“In a minute, Will,” another boy called from near the door. “Hold still, Doran!”

There was a brief scuffle. After a few minutes a shot glass was shoved into Sirius’s hand.

“Bottoms up,” Austin said. “Welcome to Camp Half-Blood.”

So this was the place Dumbledore was hoping to get an army from? Sirius just managed to stop himself from laughing by doing his best Mad-Eye impression and sniffing the contents of the shot glass suspiciously. He could barely see what was going on around him and he could tell that these powerful demigods were just kids.

Molly Weasley would never let Dumbledore fight a war using children, never mind the rest of the Order.

“I think your dad’s stopped flirting with me, Will,” Sapphire said conversationally.

Sirius nearly spat out the bitter drink that he’d just thrown back.

“He gave me a book of poetry at Christmas,” Sapphire continued, “and it wasn’t filled with love poems like the last one was.”

“My dad’s been sending you poems?” Will asked incredulously.

Sapphire gave a nod, which Sirius was glad that he was actually able to see, and said, “I think that in this case the poem would be,

_Melinoe attacks._

_She’s using killer zombies._

_She’s such a—”_

“I’m going to get you some water,” Will interrupted loudly. “You stay with Sirius and _don’t say anything._ ”

Sapphire smiled and swung her legs languidly from the edge of the bed she was sitting on. Will cautiously turned around and immediately ran into the satyr coming towards them.

The heavily bandaged satyr, who was a satyr.

Sirius had never seen a satyr before.

The satyr gave Will a bottle of water. “Nico di Angelo told you to stay with them,” the satyr rasped, managing to look terrified though the bandages on his face.

“Doran!” Austin shouted.

Will shook his head while the satyr shuffled away. “This is going to be a frustrating summer,” he predicted. 

“Definitely,” Sapphire agreed, somehow managing to speak and drink at the same time. “Harry’s here.”

Sirius immediately looked towards the door. Two heads of scruffy black hair appeared and the shorter one turned into a dash of ink as Harry ran towards him and threw his arms around him. Sirius was nearly knocked off his chair.

“You’re alive, you’re alive!” Harry kept repeating.

“Can’t breathe,” Sirius complained.

Harry fell back, grinning and crying simultaneously. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Sirius’s stomach growled. “You wouldn’t happen to know when they serve dinner around here, would you?” 


	21. Ed XXI

Ed didn’t think he wanted to be invited to any more head counselor meetings. He had come to the conclusion that they were far too dangerous, even when a good third of the counselors weren’t there due to other responsibilities or being stuck in the infirmary.

“For the love of all the gods, calm down!” Leila shouted over the rest of the noise in the game room. “It’s not the end of the world!”

Thunder rumbled, probably due to her “for the love of all the gods” line.

“Sit down!” Piper ordered.

Once the counselors had quieted down, Ed shook off the charmspeak for long enough to pop his head out from under the ping pong table. When he didn’t get his head taken off by one of Mark’s grenades or turned into some sort of animal by Lou Ellen he decided that it was mostly safe and quickly retook his seat before Conner or Travis could put shaving cream on it.

“Thank you, Piper,” Annabeth said. She stood up with her hands on her hips and sent a glare around the room that made Ed want to duck back under the table. Percy put a hand on her arm and slowly eased her back into her chair.

“Okay,” Percy said calmly, “we may have really, really screwed up the timeline, but we can fix it and it won’t cause the world to explode. Right, Nico?”

“The world won’t explode,” Nico promised, “but we can’t fix the timeline unless we do something extreme, like erase the wizards’ memories.”

“If my cabin and Cabin Fifteen worked together we might be able to replace their memories of us with memories of a regular summer and what’s in the books,” Lou Ellen said.

Mark scowled. “But then we’d have to convince Sirius Black to play dead. The only people good at that are Piper and Drew.”

“Excuse me?” Piper said. Mark shifted his chair away from her.

Ed raised his hand. “I’d like to point out that we’re talking about modifying the memories of children.” That couldn’t be good for brain development.

“Let’s not do that,” Percy agreed. “Any other ideas?”

“Why don’t we just leave it alone?” Conner suggested. “Nico did say the world won’t explode.”

“Yeah,” Travis agreed. “It’s not like the books were written by the Oracle, just a legacy of Apollo.”

“Their future isn’t written in stone,” Annabeth translated.

“Just paper,” Percy quipped.

“So we do nothing?” Leila asked. “We can do nothing. It’ll be nice to do nothing again.” That was in reference to the previous summer, when leaving things alone had been the answer to a problem for the first time in forever, according to Sapphire.

“I’m good with that,” Mark said. “Unless there’s an option where we get to blow stuff up.”

“NO!”

Mark scowled at the shouts that blasted him from every direction and crossed his arms sullenly. “I’m just sayin’.”

Ed promised himself that he’d talk to his siblings and the Hephaestus kids about bomb diffusion classes. He wasn’t naive enough to think that anyone at camp would stop making things blow up, but it would be nice to be able to stop it once and a while.

“All in favour?” Percy asked.

Hands were raised all around the table and Percy nodded. “Okay, we do nothing, for once. Now can we talk about the activities we have planned for the wizards? I still think Capture the Flag would be a good idea…”

* * *

Sirius Black’s grand resurrection was at dinner. When he arrived at the pavilion there was a round of applause from the Gryffindors and those who Nico and Hazel had pointed out as members of Dumbledore’s Army. McGonagall even shook his hand and congratulated him for not being dead.

“Why didn’t I get a homecoming like this?” Percy complained. “Even Jason got applause at his first dinner after you-know-what and he was only dead for a minute.”

“You gate-crashed your own funeral,” Nico reminded him with a half-smile.

Percy grinned. “I guess that was pretty cool, except for Annabeth trying to crush me to death.”

“What’s you-know-what?” Hermione asked from the new ‘Hogwarts’ table, interrupting their gilding of the good old days.

The smiles melted off of Percy and Nico’s faces. “You’ll find out at the campfire,” Percy said gruffly.

“Stop eavesdropping, Hermione,” Sapphire suggested. “Or if you must, don’t ask questions about what you hear. It’s rude.”

“Because we all care about that so much,” Conner muttered into his drink.

The entire Hermes table was eavesdropping on the conversation happening in the area of the Big Three tables. So were the Aphrodite table and the Pheme table, though that one still only consisted of Cora Willis.

They managed to get though dinner without anything exploding except for Mark’s temper, but that was another story. After a lesson in unarmed combat, which put more than a few people in the infirmary with black eyes and various broken bones, the Hermes cabin, which included Fay Dunbar, trooped down to the campfire, sans Conner, Julia, and Cecil as they were the ones with broken bones. 

“I am not looking forward to this,” Travis grumbled as they took their seats. Ed nodded. He knew that Chris would agree if he were there and Chris was a pretty good judge when it came to trouble. They didn’t talk about the time when he’d joined up with the Titans.

The wizards were all yawning as they sat down. It was 9PM in Long Island but the wizards’ bodies were telling them it was two in the morning. However, their professors had all insisted on carrying out as normal a day as possible, even though it caused chronic cases of wizards falling asleep as soon as they sat down. Their little naps didn’t last for long as the Apollo cabin struck up a loud and lively tune on their instruments.

“Down by the Aegean,

Where the olive trees grow,

Back to my home,

I dare not go

For if I do,

I will be seeing,

Dryads and satyrs, playing guitars,

Down by the Aegean!” they sang.

Ed was surprised that all of the wizards jolting awake all at once didn’t cause an earthquake.

The campers sang along to ten more verses of _Down by the Aegean_ while the wizards fell into a cycle of nodding off and being shocked awake. They had just gotten started on _I’ll Make a Man Out of You,_ a favourite Disney song at camp as it seemed to be the only one about fighting, when a holographic image appeared above Fay’s head.

The crossed torches lit up Fay’s face as she looked up at them. “Who…?”

“Your mother is Hecate,” Ed said as the crowd went silent.

“All hail Fay Dunbar, daughter of Hecate, goddess of magic and crossroads, lady of ghosts,” Chiron announced. All of the demigods bowed to Fay, who blushed.

“Congratulations, Fay,” Sapphire said. She made her way towards the bright orange campfire and gave Fay another little bow. “Your mother has perfect timing because I was just thinking that it was time for a ghost story.”

Sapphire’s wide grin dropped off her face in the blink of an eye. It was replaced by one of the most sombre expressions Ed had ever seen her wear.

“I lied, it’s not a ghost story, it’s true. It’s called _The Battle of Half-Blood Hill_.” 


	22. Wizards XXII

“What’s a ghost story?” Ron whispered.

Hermione didn’t even blink as she elbowed him. A little thinking crease appeared between her eyes as she waited for Sapphire to start telling her true story. There was no myth that she could remember that was called _The Battle of Half-Blood Hill_.

Sapphire was looking over the crowd, pausing at some points before moving on. When Hermione retraced her steps she realized that Sapphire was looking at all of the older demigods, her boyfriend, Percy and Annabeth Jackson, and others who had to be war veterans. The blond man who Hermione was pretty sure was named Jason Grace gave Sapphire a nod and the story finally began.

“Half-Blood Hill is marked by death. It is named for Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, who made her last stand there to let her friends get to safety. Five years ago it was the site of one of the deadliest battles this camp has ever seen. We call it the Battle of Half-Blood Hill. I wasn’t here when it happened, and that probably makes me the best person to tell you about it.”

Sapphire laughed sadly. “Camp Half-Blood was under siege. The Outsiders, demigods styling themselves as Romans, had us trapped. Neither side was backing down, but no one really wanted to fight, no one except for Octavian. He was a power hungry descendent of Apollo who encouraged war between the Outsiders and the campers. When it didn’t come fast enough for him, he had his followers capture Reyna, the leader of the Outsiders, and led them into battle himself, straight for Half-Blood Hill.”

Ron leaned towards Hermione again and whispered as quietly as he could, “What does ‘styling themselves as Romans’ mean?”

“I think it means they believe their parents are Roman gods,” Hermione said quickly. “Be quiet!”

“The Outsiders were a strong military force,” Sapphire continued. “Admittedly, they were stronger than the campers. They could, and would, have destroyed us, but then the Seven arrived: Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Jason Grace, Piper McLean, Frank Zhang, Hazel Levesque, and Leo Valdez. They had defeated the Giants in Greece alongside their godly parents, they survived the Ancient Lands and they would have stopped the battle between the campers and the Outsiders if Octavian hadn’t done it for them by summoning an army of monsters.”

The campfire, which had been shrinking since Sapphire started telling the story, abruptly turned from a normal orange colour to wild tongues of blue and red that fluctuated wildly in height. Annabeth had told the wizards that the campfire changed with the campers’ mood. If Hermione had to guess she would say that the fire was showing the demigods as a mix of sad and angry, and she would probably be right.

Mutters had broken out among the demigods about the same time as the fire changed and Sapphire had to wait for them to stop before she could keep going.

“The campers and the Outsiders banded together to fight the monsters,” Sapphire said, “but the worst enemy was right under everyone’s feet. The Earth had awoken and as she took her full form she fought against the demigods, trapping them in quicksand, dropping them in sinkholes and churning up the ground beneath their feet.”

Hermione thought she heard Percy Jackson mutter something along the lines of “stupid nosebleed”, but she was too far away from him to be entirely sure.

“Many good people died that day, and a few bad ones.” Sapphire gave a wicked smile that seemed completely out of place to Hermione. “Reyna killed Octavian in the battle. Little things like armed guards and broken ribs were never going to keep her down.”

“Not a chance!” the blond man who was probably Jason Grace shouted at the same time as Percy Jackson did.

Hermione, the Slytherins and a handful of Hufflepuffs were probably the only wizards who noticed the voices of both men cracking slightly like they were holding back tears.

“Jinx!” exclaimed the twin brothers who lead the Hermes cabin.

“I’m awake!” a blond boy with scrawny arms shouted.

“Go back to sleep, Clovis,” almost every demigod around the campfire said flatly.

“He seems like an interesting bloke,” Sirius muttered.

Sapphire sighed. “At last, Jason Grace called on his own army. Hundreds of storm spirits descended on the battlefield, led by Jason’s friend, Tempest. Under Jason’s command the storm spirits dug into one specific area of the ground and flew away with the earth goddess as she fully emerged. Jason flew after the struggling goddess and summoned a storm, the largest storm he can ever remember creating. When he reached the goddess he stabbed his sword into her heart and called down a lightning bolt. The electricity was conducted down though his sword into the heart of the earth goddess.”

Sapphire cleared her throat and someone tossed her a bottle of water. “Thanks, Lacy. As I was saying, the earth goddess was struck by the massive bold of lightning and at the same time every storm spirit hit her with as much of their own lightning as they could. Then the earth goddess, the mother of the Giants, exploded and dissolved in the rain. The Prophecy of Seven said ‘ _to storm or fire the world must fall’_ and she fell, but Jason fell with her. He died to defeat the earth goddess. He was a hero, and so were all the others who died that day. The earth goddess was defeated and a treaty between the campers and the Outsiders was signed, in the rain, on Half-Blood Hill. While that was going on, Jason was given the Physicians Cure and returned to life. One of our heroes was returned to us, but we will never forget those who are still gone.”

Sapphire looked up at Chiron. “The story is finished.”

“Thank you, Sapphire,” the centaur said gruffly. “I believe that is enough for tonight. Off to bed, all of you. Wizards, please remember that your activities start at nine sharp and your instructors can give you penalties for lateness.”

“And someone get Hypnos’s kids back to their cabin,” Mr. D, the camp director, ordered without looking up from his magazine. “I don’t want to have to tell their father that they’ve been eaten by the harpies, and what a loss that would be.”

Hermione practically climbed over people to get to Sapphire and started asking questions as fast as her lips could form the words, which was very fast. Harry and Ron struggled to catch up with her.

“Hermione,” Sapphire interrupted harshly, “could you pretty please with a cherry on top save your questions until after most of the camp has spent the night crying their eyes out, mutilating punching bags, or having horrible nightmares because it’s _that_ time of the week again, _please and thank you_?”

“Uh…uh…”Hermione stammered.

“That’s what I thought. Goodnight.” Sapphire walked away while Harry and Ron were tongue-tied by Hermione being tongue-tied.

“Blimey,” Ron said at last.

Harry blinked. “I think you mean, _oh my gods_.”


	23. Sapphire XXIII

Nico had shadow travelled to Camp Jupiter to play outrun-the-sunset. Sapphire had decided not to do the same because she would probably end up playing pass-out-on-arrival. It was now hovering around two in the morning at Camp Half-Blood and Sapphire was still awake. During nightmare nights she would usually go to bed and wake up every ten minutes due to her nightmares, Nico waking up from a nightmare, or anyone else in Camp waking up from a nightmare, usually Percy. This nightmare night she’d decided that getting an hour of sleep was not worth having nightmares about zombies.

“I have a bad idea, Jay,” she announced.

 _‘Whatever you’re thinking, don’t do it,’_ Jay advised.

Sapphire had already serviced all her weapons, tried to juggle with fireballs, and written three pages in her journal that were probably complete gibberish. Her playing with fire had singed the tip of Jay’s tail and left him one hundred percent done with her nonsense.

“It’s not such a bad idea,” she said, “just waking up Amber.”

Amber got really grumpy when she was woken up. _Really_ grumpy.

Jay looked at her with what would have been eyebrows raised high if he had a human face. _‘Gee, that’s not a bad idea at all.’_

“Really? Thanks, Jay!”

 _‘Note to self,’_ Jay grumbled while he watched Sapphire practically skip from the couch in front of the fireplace to her bunk, _‘don’t use sarcasm when Sapphire’s been awake for eighteen hours.’_

Sapphire hid her laughter in her suitcase as she dug through it looking for the plastic prism that Amber had given her on their birthday. Jay hadn’t even known what sarcasm was until she’d explained it to him.

Jay went back to curling up in front of the fire and pretending to ignore her while Sapphire hung the prism up on the foot of the bunk above her’s and shone her flashlight through it to create a rainbow. “Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering and show me Amber Banks at Brooklyn House, the Twenty-First Nome.”

The rainbow went fuzzy after she threw a drachma into it. After a few moments, longer than it would take if she were calling a demigod or mortal, its colours rearranged themselves into Amber sitting in the library of Brooklyn House at a table piled high with scrolls.

“Hi, Amber. You do know that it’s two in the morning, right?”

Amber looked up from the scroll she was struggling to read. “Don’t you?”

“Nightmare night,” Sapphire said, which was really all the explanation that was needed.

“Oh,” Amber said

Sapphire nodded towards the scrolls covering the table. “Whatcha doing?”

It had taken a bit of wheedling on Sapphire’s part, but Amber was currently at the Brooklyn House July 2015 Path of the Gods crash course, family of all magicians welcome. Sapphire did count as a magician, though she drew the line at being a wizard. Her wand was back in its proper, magician’s, shape after all. 

Amber sighed. “We have to write papers on gods that Carter assigned to us. I got Kebechet.”

Sapphire blinked. “Who?”

“Exactly,” Amber said. “She’s Anubis’s daughter and that’s all I know about her.”

Sapphire blinked again. “Anubis has kids?”

“Shouldn’t you know this stuff?” Amber teased.

“I’m Greek, not Egyptian.” Sapphire crossed her legs and propped her pillow under her chin. “So, what else have you been up to?”

Amber told Sapphire about settling into her room at Brooklyn House, the several arguments she’d had with Sean Edgley over the past three days, how one of the other family members had burnt their eyebrows off…

They went through two more drachmas before Amber wasn’t able to hide her yawns anymore.

“I’d better let you go,” Sapphire said reluctantly. “Carter probably has more exhausting activities planned for you today.”

“Probably,” Amber yawned. “Will you be okay?”

Sapphire grimaced. “There’s only two more hours until first wake-up call, I’ll manage.”

She said goodbye to her sister and sighed once the IM had completely disappeared. “Two hours,” she groaned. “Superfantastic. Maybe I should dig out some sugar.”

 _‘Please don’t,’_ Jay begged. _‘The last thing we need is you on a sugar high. Just go to sleep,’_

“But—”

Jay cut her off before she could start her argument. _‘It’s my job to protect you. That includes making sure you get sleep, even if it is only an hour.’_

“But—”

 _‘Go to sleep,’_ he ordered. _‘I know I’m not Nico or Leo, but I am a cat.’_

Well, Sapphire really couldn’t argue with that. She lay down on her bunk and was asleep before her head hit her pillow. Jay gave an amused purr before jumping off the couch and going to curl up beside her. Really, Sapphire was such a human.

* * *

Sapphire was quite sure that she had spoken in English so she wasn’t sure why none of the wizards were doing what she had told them to do.

Despite it having been _that time of the week_ , the activities that they’d planned for the wizards were still going ahead. They wouldn’t be that dangerous after all, wizards couldn’t be hurt by Celestial bronze. The wizards had been broken up into the same groups as they’d had for the tours and four of the head counselors had drawn the short straws for leading them. Sapphire had gotten Professor McGonagall’s group.

And they weren’t listening to her.

“Did I speak in English?” she asked Professor McGonagall, who was observing from the first row in the arena.

“You did, Miss Banks,” McGonagall said stiffly.

“Then why aren’t they listening?”

“You want us to swing swords at each other?” Hermione exclaimed.

“Yeah,” Sapphire said. “So?”

“That’s dangerous!” Hermione practically shrieked.

And shooting curses at each other wasn’t? Sapphire shook her head and sighed. Wizards. “Harry Potter, front and centre,” she ordered. “Please and thank you.”

Harry immediately stepped forwards, ignoring the outbreak of mutters and whispering behind him. Sapphire went to the crate of swords and weighed a few in her hands before choosing one and handing it to Harry hilt first. Harry held the sword awkwardly in one hand while Sapphire chose a sword for herself.

“Sword up,” she told Harry. “Hold it with both hands.”

Harry complied and then asked, “What do I have to do?”

“Well, since this isn’t some bad fanfiction where Harold James Potter-Lupin-Black is the son of every Olympian god and Hades and Hestia, just block my strikes,” Sapphire said. “I’ll make it easy, promise.”

“Uh…okay,” Harry said, looking confused about the Harold James Potter-Lupin-Black thing. Or maybe the fanfiction thing.

“Is everyone watching?” Sapphire asked.

A few of the wizards nodded.

“Good. High.” Sapphire swung her sword at Harry’s head and he quickly moved his blade to block it.

“Good,” she said. “Middle.” This time she swung at Harry’s waist. Again he moved and blocked her blade just in time.

Sapphire smirked and without giving any warning sliced through the air towards Harry’s knees. This time he did not move fast enough to stop the sword. Hermione, Ginny and several other witches (and wizards) screamed as Sapphire cut right through Harry’s legs with seventy centimetres of Celestial bronze.

Harry looked panicked, then shocked and then extremely confused when he looked down and saw that both of his legs were in one piece.

“Celestial bronze,” Sapphire said, showing the wizards the unbloodied sword. “It only harms monsters, gods and demigods. Everyone else just isn’t important enough for it to hurt.” She looked over at Harry. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” Harry said shakily.

Sapphire gestured towards the crate of swords. “These are all Celestial bronze but their designs are the same as the swords you would be the most likely to come across, medieval European. This way you can learn without inflicting injures we might not be able to fix.”

The Apollo kids could reattach limbs, it just might not work for wizards considering that nectar was involved.

Sapphire fixed her gaze on the frozen group of wizards. “Everyone grab a sword,” she said slowly, “and make two lines facing each other.”

This time the wizards all listened to her. It took them about five minutes, but eventually they all had a sword and were lined up facing someone.

“Spread out a little more,” Sapphire advised. “You need room to swing your sword. And hold them with two hands, please. Will doesn’t want me in the infirmary until at least the second week of camp.”

“Can we block first, Sapphire?” Luna asked sweetly.

Sapphire nodded. “Everyone in Luna’s line is blocking first.”

Several wizards craned their necks to look up and down the line they were standing in. “Who’s Luna?” a seventh-year asked.

Sapphire sighed and moved to stand at the end of the lines. “Everyone in the line to my right is blocking first.” She waved her right hand and then switched to waving her left hand. “Everyone in the line to my left is attacking first. Swing when I say to, where I say to, and keep in time. Clear?”

“Yes,” most of the wizards said.

“Yes, professor,” said the rest of the wizards, most of whom blushed after they spoke.

“Not a professor,” Sapphire pointed out. “Everyone ready? High…middle…low!”

Swords clashed haphazardly. Sapphire shook her head. “I want to hear you swinging together! High…middle…low!”

The clash of metal was dissonant again. The entire wrestling class a few meters over covered their ears.

It was going to be a long hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The training exercise from this chapter is a modified version of one practiced by pages in Tortall. I think I read it in the _Song of the Lioness_ quartet.


	24. Wizards XXIV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not entirely pleased with this chapter, but it's one of the things I'm stuck with.

Harry, Ron and Hermione collapsed on the couch in the guest house common room.

“We are going to die,” Ron gasped grimly.

Hermione was too busy catching her breath to answer. They had just come back from their last activity for the day, foot racing with the dryads, and Harry was the only one of them who wasn’t completely winded.

“Nico said they’re not trying to kill us,” Harry pointed out.

“Then he said it might happen by accident,” Hermione choked out.

“If we weren’t careful,” Harry added. “I’m sure we’ll be fine once our bodies get used to what we’re putting them through.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ron gasped. “How are you not tired?”

Harry grimaced. “I run a lot.”

It was necessary for surviving Dudley’s Harry Hunting.

“Wood started making us run laps during second year,” he added, “as one of his crazy training ideas. I sort of kept up with it after, during the summer.”

“You’re absolutely bonkers,” Ron said dryly. “You’ll fit in great here.”

“Sure,” Harry said absentmindedly. He was rubbing his scar, which had been itching since the night before after he’d woken up from an awful nightmare. It had merged together Cedric being killed and Sirius ‘dying’ plus Mr. Weasley being attacked by Voldemort’s snake. In his nightmare Sirius had really died and he’d woken up too late to stop Mr. Weasley from dying.

It was bad.

“How much do you want to bet that the fireworks happening tonight are actually some sort of war game?” Ron asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ron,” Hermione said. She jumped up, seemingly recovered from their torturous run. “I’d better shower before all the hot water’s gone. See you at supper!”

Ron suddenly looked about a hundred times happier. “Right, supper!” he said as Hermione hurried out of the room. “There’s still supper.”

“I thought you were exhausted,” Harry said with a grin.

Ron just shrugged. “The food’s the best thing about this place.” Then he frowned. “What did she mean by the hot water being gone?”

“I happen to like the Aphrodite cabin,” Seamus Finnigan interrupted from where he’d snuck up behind Harry. He leaned on the back of the couch with his chin resting on top of his crossed arms. “Actually, all of the girls here are really good looking. Do they just make them hotter in America?”

“They are half god,” Harry pointed out, mostly thinking that despite that none of the demigod girls had looked half as beautiful as Ginny. Maybe it was all the scars.

“Right,” Seamus agreed. “I mean, Daphne Greengrass is one of them and she is—”

“My sister is what, Finnigan?” Astoria Greengrass demanded as she entered the room.

“Extremely beautiful,” Seamus said quickly. He looked over at Astoria. “It must run in the family.”

“Humph,” Astoria sniffed, though she did look slightly pleased at the compliment, even though it was from a Gryffindor.

After a few more minutes the boys decided that they should probably go shower as well and Ron was the one who got to be unlucky enough to find out what Hermione meant by the hot water running out. His teeth were still chattering when Nico came to lead them to the dining pavilion.

Supper was just as delicious as Ron had insisted it was. Harry thought that it was as good as Mrs. Weasley’s cooking, though he would never ever think of telling any of the Weasleys that.

After supper all of the girls disappeared into their rooms while the boys sat in the guest house common room and wiled away the time until the fireworks. Ron broke out a chess set he’d found and, after he’d gotten used to physically moving the pieces rather than just giving them orders, proceeded to win three games in a row, including one played against a seventh-year Ravenclaw boy. It was around the end of the third game that muscles started to stiffen up, so when one of the demigods came to lead them to where the fireworks would be happening there was a lot of cursing and falling over from the wizards.

“You’ll get used to it,” the demigod, Harry thought he was a son of Apollo, promised once everyone had managed to get themselves standing up. 

“I hope so,” Seamus grumbled. Harry rubbed his stiff arms, which were very much not used to swinging around a heavy sword, and decided he had to agree.

The girls reappeared, dressed in nice Muggle clothing that the purebloods looked less uncomfortable in than the clothes they’d been told to get for all the exercising they’d be doing. Quite a few of them had spent some time on their hair and makeup. The boys felt rather scruffy standing beside them.

Except for Ron. He either didn’t really care or didn’t notice enough to care.

“Everyone here?” the possible son of Apollo asked.

Professor Sinistra did a quick head count and replied in the affirmative.

“Okay.” The might be a son of Apollo turned back to the students. “Hi guys, I’m Will Solace, head of the Apollo cabin and apparently the only head counselor who doesn’t have a date tonight. We’re going to head down to the beach now. You’ll be sitting on the blankets that are already laid out there. Just a reminder, _don’t go into the water_. It’s already near sunset and that’s when more sea monsters like to come to the surface. We’ve only got one son of Poseidon.”

That sure made everyone feel so much better about their chances of not dying.

Several of the students paired off when they reached the beach. Luna dragged a red-faced Neville to a sparkly blanket and began braiding his hair, humming a little song as she did. No one played attention to that as at the same time Seamus bowed to Astoria Greengrass dramatically and offered her his arm, which she took in full view of everyone, pointedly ignoring the other Slytherins. 

Ron gaped widely. “Did Seamus just…?”

“Yeah,” Harry said hoarsely. “I think he did.”

“Merlin’s beard!”

Harry and Ron sat with Ginny and Hermione a fair ways up the beach, far enough away from the water that they could only see the shadow of what Harry guessed was a sea serpent rather than its scales.

The demigods started arriving a few minutes after the wizards had all gotten settled. It was highly probable that they’d just been waiting for everyone to sit down before coming out from wherever they’d been hiding.

“Amazing, we’re not late this year,” a girl said. Harry looked over his shoulder and saw Sapphire and Leo taking a seat behind them.

“Third time’s the charm, Aimi,” Leo said with a smile.

“And it was a small fire,” Sapphire said.

“That too.”

Sapphire noticed Harry watching them and gave him a small wave with one ungloved hand. Harry quickly turned around. It must have said something about how important the fireworks were that Sapphire was dressed up enough to be without gloves for the first time Harry had ever seen.

The fireworks were spectacular.

They were huge, they were bright, they were loud, they were moving.

Fred and George had their work cut out for them.

The final was a rain of blinding white stars that condensed into a shimmering omega before bursting into hundreds of thousands of sparks.

“Wow,” Ginny said.

Understatement of the year.

Everyone began standing up and trying to stretch their legs when the whistling sounds of more fireworks going off made them turn back towards the ocean.

Three rockets exploded in the sky. Their silver and red sparks swirled around and wrote:

SAPPHIRE

WILL YOU MARRY ME?

LEO

Harry looked behind him and saw Sapphire standing with one hand over her mouth. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the words in the sky and Leo, who was holding her other hand. Everyone on the beach, including the wizards, seemed to hold their breath.

“Well,” Leo asked nervously, “will you?”

“Yes,” Sapphire laughed. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“I told you so!” shouted a man who Harry thought was Jacob? Jason? Jason. 

The other campers took that as their cue to loudly swarm the couple. Hermione was trying to push towards them with a very disapproving look on her face when Ginny grabbed her and dragged her in the opposite direction. “Don’t,” she ordered.

“But—” Hermione said.

“No,” Ginny interrupted. “You are not going to ruin this for them.”

“But they’re too young!” Hermione exclaimed quickly.

Luckily it was too loud for any of the demigods to hear her or they would have had words, words that would likely have ended with Hermione hanging upside down from the top of the climbing wall.

“They could die the second they step outside of this camp,” Harry said flatly. “Haven’t you been listening?”

Hermione blushed. “I have! It’s just…” She shook her head and gave a little laugh.

“Don’t worry,” Ginny said. “I’ll keep her under control.”

Hermione huffed but didn’t make any argument. The corners of her mouth twitched like she was trying not to smile.

All in all it was a wonderful night, except for being almost too sore to move. 


	25. Sapphire XXV

“Let’s see it,” Lacy ordered as soon as Rosalind had let her into the Persephone cabin.

Sapphire obligingly held out her left hand so that Lacy could inspect her engagement ring. Rosalind rolled her eyes at Lacy from behind the daughter of Aphrodite and Sapphire just managed not to giggle. Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered much if she failed because she had been grinning like a fool since the Fourth of July.

“The jewel matches your eyes,” Lacy said with a squeal.

“It’s _orange_ ,” Rosalind mouthed, somehow managing to put her trademark emphasis on the word even though she wasn’t making a sound.

Lacy squealed again and gave Sapphire a bone-cracking hug. “I’m so happy for you!”

“I _believe_ Sapphire would _like_ to _breathe_ sometime _soon_ ,” Rosalind said.

Lacy loosened her hug enough for Sapphire’s lungs to properly inflate. “It’s so romantic! He asked you at the fireworks!”

Sapphire thought about telling Lacy that she knew that, she had been there after all, but Lacy was somewhere around Aphrodite Level Seven by their rating system and there was no reasoning with her when she was in that range.

The doorbell rang. Lacy released Sapphire and began hopping like a bunny instead. 

“It’s Leila,” Rosalind told them with a frown, “ _but_ she’s brought _someone_ else, the new _daughter_ of Apollo.”

Lacy and Sapphire looked at each other. Lacy grinned even wider.

“Let them in, Rosalind,” Sapphire said.

The vines at the door moved and gently pulled Leila and Daphne Greengrass into the cabin. Daphne immediately blinked as her eyes were assaulted by the barrage of colour that was the flowers covering the walls of the cabin.

“Good morning,” Leila said. She held out the bags she was carrying. “I brought strawberries and chocolate.”

Lacy immediately pounced on her. She pulled out the boxes of chocolate and containers of strawberries and laid the feast out on the grass floor.

“Morning, Leila,” Sapphire said, “Daphne, are you okay?”

Daphne blinked rapidly. “It’s very bright.”

Sapphire and Rosalind looked at each other. “Yeah, we haven’t been able to fix that yet,” Sapphire admitted.

“We _are_ trying,” Rosalind said.

“You get used to it,” Leila promised.

Daphne looked between Sapphire and Rosalind, her gaze lingering on Rosalind’s hyacinth blue hair. “Are you sisters?” she asked. 

“Nope,” Sapphire said. She sat on the floor beside Lacy and took a strawberry. She took a bite and couldn’t talk for a good thirty seconds. There was nothing like camp strawberries.

“So,” Lacy asked while Sapphire was occupied, “you and Leila?”

Daphne’s cheeks turned pink. “She asked me to the fireworks…”

“And her response was that her father, stepfather, wouldn’t approve but he’s going to disinherit her anyway,” Leila finished.

“And I wanted to go with you,” Daphne pointed out.

Sapphire grinned at her. “You are going to fit in great here.”

“Isn’t she?” Lacy said. “Show Leila your ring.”

Leila stepped back as she really looked at Sapphire for the first time since coming into the cabin. “You’re not wearing gloves.”

Sapphire laughed. “Do you really think I can’t control it by now? Speak up, we’re all friends here.”

At this point Daphne began to look confused. She looked back and forth between Leila and Sapphire like she was following the Quaffle at a Quidditch match.

Leila hesitated for a split second before cracking a smile. “I thought _you_ were supposed to be paranoid about that.”

Sapphire shrugged. “So did I.”

Daphne spoke up because she wasn’t getting any less confused. “What _are_ you talking about?”

“Uh, picture the Killing Curse only purple and fiery and I don’t need a wand to use it,” Sapphire said lightly. 

Daphne blinked. “Okay,” she said before sitting down and taking a piece of chocolate.

Sapphire blinked. “That’s it?” she asked. “No fainting or screaming or turning pale? I have to say I’m kind of disappointed, especially because it’s usually me doing that.”

“I grew up with Pansy Parkinson for a playmate,” Daphne said. “She used to pretend to use the Cruciatus Curse on her dolls.”

Sapphire had absolutely no trouble believing that. Pansy Parkinson was right up there with Voldemort for being stupidly evil. And that had absolutely nothing to do with her cursing Sapphire in the hallway right in front of Professor McGonagall when they’d been at Hogwarts. Absolutely nothing.

“Point taken,” Sapphire said.

Lacy jittered impatiently. “Sapphire…”

“Lacy, sometimes I could swear your only interest is jewellery,” Sapphire joked as Leila sat next to her so she could look at her ring.

“Hey! I like math too,” Lacy protested.

“Not nearly as much as jewellery,” Leila said.

“And matchmaking,” Sapphire added.

“And makeup.”

“And gossip.”

“Fashion.”

“Romance novels.”

“The colour pink.”

“And weapons,” Sapphire finished before bursting out laughing. Leila was quick to join her and Daphne followed when she saw the look on Lacy’s face.

“Lacy, you know we’re only teasing,” Sapphire said once she was able to speak again.

Lacy punched Sapphire’s shoulder. “I know, but I don’t have to like it.”

“We still love you,” Sapphire said.

Lacy punched Sapphire again before taking a piece of chocolate. “So,” she said once the other girls had completely stopped laughing, “wedding planning. I’m assuming a summer wedding taking place as soon as possible after you turn eighteen?”

“You would assume correctly,” Sapphire said with a lopsided smile. “But, Lacy,” she continued before the daughter of Aphrodite could start babbling, “Leo and I want to do this _together_.”

Lacy’s face fell. “Oh. So…”

“You’re going to have twice the work, yes,” Sapphire said apologetically, “but you’re going to have to share some of it with Piper. That okay?”

Lacy’s face very quickly went through a wide range of emotions that culminated with absolute elation. Then she burst into tears. Then she started squealing. 

“You are evil, Sapphire Amy Banks,” Leila scolded. “You broke Lacy.”

“Is this normal here?” Daphne whispered to Rosalind.

The flower nymph nodded. “ _Very_.”

Daphne sighed. “Good to know.”

“Your dress,” Lacy said after the five minutes or so it took for her to calm down. “We have to talk about your dress. It has to match your ring, but I don’t think we’d be able to get that many fire opals.”

“I was going to see if I could wear my mum’s kimono,” Sapphire said carefully. “It’s red...” She trailed off when Lacy started glaring at her.

“Sapphire, you can’t wear a kimono,” Lacy said firmly. “You’ll disappear, and there’s no way you could fight in one.”

“You could work off the colour of it,” Leila suggested.

Daphne put her two knuts in. “I think red and silver would look nice.”

“With flowers,” Rosalind added. “There _have_ to be flowers.”

“I am obviously not needed here,” Sapphire murmured as the other four started tossing ideas around in earnest. She took another strawberry and idly wondered if any of them would notice when she left for work in an hour.

Probably not. 


	26. Wizards XXVI

Harry ducked. Neville’s sword went flying over his head, missing him by a hair. He was just about to retaliate when Neville reversed his strike and sent the double-edged blade straight through his neck. He and Neville both jumped. Two weeks was not long enough to get used to that.

“Dead!” Percy Jackson announced. “Nice work, Neville.”

Neville grinned, his face turning red. “Thanks, Percy.”

Percy turned to Harry. “Harry, you were looking at Neville’s sword the whole time. If you do that the only thing you’re going to be able to do is react. Look at your opponent’s torso, if they have one, the muscle movements will tell you what they’re going to do before they move.”

Harry nodded. He’d taught something similar to the DA, only he’d told them to look at their opponent’s wand arm. Hermione handed him and Neville bottles of water as they stepped back into the sidelines. Harry nodded his thanks and drank half of his bottle in one go. 

“You know, I actually think we’re getting better at this,” Ron said with disbelief. “Charlie will be so jealous.”

“Won’t he?” Ginny agreed, watching as Luna dodged a sword swipe from Hermione before retaliating with an attempt at severing her legs at the knees.

Charlie Weasley had always been the knights and dragons type. Since there was zero chance of him ever becoming a knight he had instead chosen to become the closest he could to a dragon. He was going to be _very_ jealous of his two youngest siblings. 

“You’re dead, Luna,” Percy said.

Luna and Hermione both stopped and stared at him with surprise. “What?” Hermione asked.

Percy tilted his head towards Luna. “You hit her jugular vein and carotid artery,” he said, before muttering something in Ancient Greek.

Hermione blinked. “I did?” she asked, surprised both that that had happened and that Percy knew where and what the jugular and carotid were.

There had to be some reason that his wife called him a ‘seaweed brain’.

“You did,” Luna said with a smile. “By now I would be bleeding out.”

That was a comforting thought.

“Okay, that’s it for today, guys,” Percy announced after three more bouts. “Tomorrow you start monster fighting. Be ready.”

* * *

“Hermione, is this really necessary?” Ron asked, eyeing the cabin in front of them nervously.

“Yes, it is,” Hermione said fiercely. “Since Annabeth won’t let us into her cabin, Nico is our best bet.”

“Why can’t we just learn with the rest of our group?” Ron complained.

Hermione sniffed. “I want us to be prepared.”

Harry ignored his best friends and knocked on the door to the Hades cabin. It immediately flew open to reveal Sapphire standing on the other side with her arms crossed.

“It’s about time,” she said. “How long were you guys going to stand there?”

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at each other. Sapphire rolled her eyes. “Never mind. Do you need help with something? Have the Ares kids been bothering you? Because I am really not the best person to ask to deal with that, there’d be way too much blood spilled.”

“Is Nico here?” Hermione asked without missing a beat. “We want to ask him about tomorrow’s lessons.”

Sapphire sighed. “You just missed him. He’s in Calgary.”

“He’s what?” Ron asked.

“In Calgary, Alberta, _Canada,_ ” Sapphire said. “He went to the Calgary Stampede with...some friends.”

“What?” Ron asked with his bottom jaw nearly touching the ground.

Sapphire sighed again. “Not important. He’s not here. Can I help you?”

“Maybe…” Hermione said slowly.

“Definitely,” Harry said.

Sapphire nodded. “You’d better come in then. Mind the weapons.”

Harry took two steps and tripped over a spear shaft. He somehow managed to bring a round shield leaning against the wall by the door with him. Both he and the shield made a lot of noise when they hit the floor.

“I told you to mind the weapons,” Sapphire complained.

“Sorry,” Harry groaned as Hermione and Ron helped him to his feet. He rubbed the spot where the metal shield had hit his head and squinted around the floor, trying to find his glasses. Sapphire picked them up from where they’d landed beside a black dagger and handed them to him.

“It’s okay, nothing’s broken. Even your glasses are fine.”

Harry put on his miraculously unbroken glasses and blinked. The cabin was absolutely covered with weapons. The only moderately free floor space was a fifty centimetre wide line going from the door to the back of the cabin, and even that had that one spear encroaching on it.

“It looks like your weapons shed exploded in here,” Harry said.

Sapphire laughed. “It does, doesn’t it? It’s not all mine. Some of its Nico’s and Malcolm had a few things he asked me to return too.”

“How many is a few?” Hermione wanted to know, looking around the cabin.

“That depends,” Sapphire said. “Are we counting each throwing star as its own thing?”

On an upper bunk, Sapphire’s cat stretched and meowed.

Sapphire shook her head. “Jay’s right, we’re getting off topic. What did you guys want to ask?”

Of course, there was no way they could immediately get back on topic after that.

“You can talk to cats?!” Ron exclaimed.

Sapphire looked up from the knife she was studying to roll her eyes. “Anyone can talk to a cat. It’s getting them to talk back that’s the real trick. Jay was a gift from my father, and I know you hate being called that, Jay, but what else can we call it?”

The cat, Jay, rolled _its_ eyes and turned around.

“See? Now he’s not talking to me,” Sapphire grumbled. “I know none of us got any sleep last night, but still. Grumpy cat.”

“Percy said we’re starting monster fighting tomorrow,” Harry said. “We wanted to know what we might be doing.”

“Hermione wanted to know what you might be doing,” Sapphire corrected while she tested a bow string.

Hermione opened her mouth to protest the assumption but closed it with a frown when she realized she really couldn’t complain. It was true after all.

Sapphire put the bow and a quiver of arrows on the opposite side of the room from where she had picked them up before going back and starting an inspection of another knife. “Monster fighting…If it were me I’d start you guys off with giants and dragons, stuff that’s similar to what you’re going to have to deal with thanks to Voldemort.”

Ron winched.

“Giants and dragons?” Hermione asked.

Sapphire nodded. “Group assault techniques, weak spots, that sort of stuff. We’ve got about a dozen different types of giants and dragons, not counting any hybrids or mutants, so that’ll take a while. Then Manticore, Sphynx, whatever else we have that you guys have a copy of. Think of it as third year Defence Against the Dark Arts with swords.” Sapphire held up a sword. “Does this look warped to you?”

“We’re going to learn to fight basilisks?” Harry asked. He wondered if a demigod would have been able to kill the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets without getting hurt like he had. Maybe, maybe not. They would have actually known what to do with Gryffindor’s sword though.

“Probably,” Sapphire mused, “though the best thing to do with those little beasts is to run away. Honestly, poisonous and fire breathing? Whoever created them just did not know when to stop.”

“What?” Harry, Ron and Hermione said.

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same basilisk,” Hermione added.

“No,” Sapphire agreed. “What you think of as a basilisk is what we would call a drakon. Big old poisonous serpent with a petrifying gaze, yes?”

“Yes,” the three of them said.

“Either way, basilisks, not nice,” Sapphire said.

All three wizards had to agree.

Sapphire frowned at the spear that had tripped Harry. “Huh, you know what I just realized.”

They didn’t.

“If Percy’s got you fighting monsters, he must think you’re ready for Capture the Flag.”


	27. Everyone XXVII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because it's time for Capture the Flag.

“Who has the helmets?”

“Who has the goggles?”

“Pass me the weed whacker, quick!”

“Where’s my sword?”

“Leo, Harley took my grapple gun!”

“Someone kill that chicken!”

The chicken in question was a mechanical chicken that thankfully didn’t explode when Nyssa went at it with the weed whacker.

“Harley, give Christopher back his grapple gun and get the goggles,” Leo shouted over the dying squawks of the out of control automaton. “I’ve got the helmets. Shane, your sword is on your bunk.”

Nyssa kicked the remains of the mechanical chicken under her bunk and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I thought the wizards weren’t going to be playing Capture the Flag,” she said to Leo, continuing the conversation they’d been having before someone’s mechanical chicken went into permanent attack mode. “What changed?”

Leo shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know. It was Percy’s idea and Annabeth changed her vote.”

Nyssa’s face turned red. “There are rules.”

“Yup.”

“Their kids are going to be running around here pretty soon,” Nyssa predicted.

“Are you ditching me for Will?” Leo asked, placing a hand over his heart. “You wound me!”

Nyssa threw the weed whacker at him.

Leo caught the weed whacker with one hand and stuck his tongue out at Nyssa.

Nyssa rolled her eyes. “Real mature, Valdez.”

Leo hefted the weed whacker before putting it back on the wall. “Right back at you, Barrera.” He turned to address the rest of their siblings. “We’re leaving in two minutes, people!”

It immediately became deadly for anyone who didn’t have demigod battle reflexes to be anywhere near Cabin Nine. The box of goggles became a projectile that would have taken off Nyssa’s head if she had been a second later in catching it.

“You know, I think it’d be fun to be an aunt,” Nyssa said under the cover of the chaos as she passed the box to Leo to put in his tool belt.

Leo narrowly missed ducking a flying hammer. “Nyssa!”

Nyssa laughed and went to help one of their younger siblings with her armour.

They made it to the edge of the woods with absolutely perfect timing. They weren’t the last to arrive.

“Where are the Underworld kids?” Travis asked Ed.

Ed shrugged. “Do you see Lacy and Piper?”

Travis, who didn’t have half his eyesight blocked by the helmet he was ever so wisely carrying rather than wearing, scanned the crowd. He shook his head.

“They must have gotten roped into wedding planning,” Ed said.

Travis’s eyes popped. “Nico di Angelo planning a wedding?”

Ed nodded, nearly hitting the person behind him with the crest on his helmet. “Yup.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s Lacy and Piper.” That was explanation enough.

After a few more minutes, everyone who was going to be playing Capture the Flag was there. Chiron began his regular rules, warnings and reminders talk and had just gotten to the teams when Blaise Zabini interrupted him with a languidly raised hand.

“Yes, Mister Zabini?” Chiron asked.

“We were thinking, _sir_ ,” he said, looking around at the other Slytherins, “why don’t we make this a game between wizards and demigods?”

“Well,” Chiron looked at the professors, who looked as surprised as he felt, “I don’t see why not. But I want you to have some demigods on your team so no one gets lost.”

“Or eaten,” Ron muttered.

“I’m sure we can manage on our own,” Blaise insisted. “The forest will be full of demigods.”

Chiron and the professors deliberated for a few minutes before deciding that it would probably be alright for the wizards to be a team on their own. Probably.

“Demigods in the south, wizards in the north,” Chiron announced. “The creek is the boundary. I will serve as battlefield medic. All weapons, magic items and inventions are allowed, though I ask all wizards who are of age to not use any deadly spells. You have five minutes for planning. Let the game begin!”

Campers and wizards streamed into the woods. Sirius Black gave his godson and his friends an encouraging thumbs up from the sidelines.

Daphne and Fay hesitated. “You are with us,” Astoria Greengrass ordered her sister and the Gryffindor demigod. “We need at least _some_ chance of winning.”

* * *

“Okay, people,” Percy said, “we need to win this or we can never show our faces again, ever.”

“That’s encouraging, Percy!” one of Ares’s sons shouted.

“Hey, I’m telling it like it is.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Percy looked around the crowd of demigods. “Lou Ellen, you can counter their magic, right?”

Lou Ellen nodded.

“I want you guarding the flag, you and,” he searched the crowd again, “Sapphire. Put the flag on Zeus’s Fist, and keep your eyes peeled.”

“Got it, Percy,” Sapphire said.

She and Lou Ellen took the flag, which had changed from the green background and gold wheat of the Demeter cabin to orange with a black pegasus, and headed for Zeus’s Fist.

“Kayla, take some of your archers for border patrol. Stay in the trees, make sure you’re hard to hit. I’ll be there with you. Clovis, your cabin’s with us too. If anyone falls asleep I want them to be on the other team, clear?”

Clovis yawned. “Crystal.”

“Hermes kids, you’re in charge of getting the flag. Nico, you’re their backup. Everyone else, distract the wizards, keep them out of our territory, and go for the flag if you have a chance. Let’s do this!”

A cheer erupted from the demigods before they scattered to do what Percy had ordered.

The Hephaestus cabin hurried to hand out as many night vision goggles as they could before everyone disappeared. They had only planned for half as many people though, so they had to be choosy. Archers got them, because arrows were a pain to get out of your body, children of Hecate didn’t because they could use magic to give themselves night vision, all the Hermes kids got them since they were going for the flag, Leila Vagnsdóttir definitely didn’t get them, because she was her mother’s daughter. 

“Leila, wait,” Percy said.

Leila turned around to face him, knowing exactly what he was going to say before he said it.

Percy grinned. “Do your thing.”

Leila smiled. “Gladly.”

* * *

“Have I mentioned how dead we are?” Ron asked.

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Only about a million times.”

“We have a thirty percent chance of winning,” Luna said helpfully.

“Really?” Neville asked.

Luna nodded. “Unfortunately, we only have a ten percent chance of winning without anyone getting maimed or fatally injured, and that’s with adjusting for us being vastly outnumbered.”

Neville blanched. “I’m going to kill Zabini for getting us into this.”

“I’ll help,” Harry said darkly.

Katie Bell gave a loud whistle that made everyone turn and look at her. “We’re never going to pull this off if we don’t work together,” she yelled. “We need a plan.”

“The flag should go in the Dead Woods,” Fay Dunbar suggested. “Most of the campers are scared to go there.”

“The Dead Woods is the place where we came into camp,” Daphne Greengrass explained.

Katie nodded. “Good idea. Let’s have two seventh years as guards.”

“Who put you in charge?” Blaise Zabini demanded.

“I did,” Katie shot back. “Do you have a problem with it?”

Zabini snorted. “I just want to win.”

“We’ll take the flag,” a seventh-year Ravenclaw volunteered himself and a Hufflepuff friend.

“Alright,” Katie said.

“The Dead Woods is this way,” Fay said.

She led the way for the two older students. They eventually chose to put the flag on top of a green rock formation where anyone who came to get it could be easily picked off with spells. Fay wished the seventh years good luck before heading back towards the creek.

“Okay, we are ready for anything, right?” the Hufflepuff asked.

His friend nodded. “Right, anything.”

The woods went dark.

“Except for this.”

“Our chances just went down to five percent,” Luna announced to the darkness. “Thought you’d want to know.”

* * *

Sapphire just had to giggle. It had been ages since Leila had made them play Capture the Flag at night, which was good tactics but it was always fun to see what the other team ended up doing to themselves.

A few unwise of age wizards advanced on the creek with their wands lit, which made it extremely easy for the archers to hit them and the people around them from far away. After the fourth or fifth person got pinned to a tree or hit in the face with a boxing glove arrow head, the wizards snuffed their lumos charms and let loose with stunning spells instead.

Archers ducked behind tree trunks and branches to avoid the jets of red light coming at them. Only one or two of them got hit, and in the dark their fallen bodies were an unavoidable tripping hazard for the attacking wizards. The hazard was added to by any wizards who got close enough to the creek to be sent to sleep by the children of Hypnos that were lying in wait.

None of the Hypnos kids had fallen asleep yet.

The wizards weren’t advancing on the creek unopposed. Demigods were engaging them in battle deep into wizard territory. Swords clashed and spells were deflected. Ron got hit by a stunner that bounced off someone’s shield and was lucky enough to bring one of Lou Ellen’s siblings down with him as he fell.

Hermes’s children got by the wizards undetected and started combing their side of the woods for the flag. Ed and a few others activated their flying shoes to get a bird’s eye view.

Ginny and Harry both had the same idea: Don’t fight, run. They ran over plenty of demigods who tried to engage them in battle and made it to part of the creek that, lucky for them, Hypnos’s children weren’t patrolling.

But Percy Jackson was.

Harry was swept off his feet and left dripping wet by the giant wave that leapt the banks of the creek. Ginny just barely missed being hit by ducking behind a tree.

Percy grinned. “Come on, guys, there are two of you and one of me.”

Harry got up. He and Ginny drew their swords and charged.

Ed was the one who spotted the flag. It was right on top of the rock that covered the entrance to Bunker Four and was being guarded by two seventh years.

~ _Over here!~_ he hissed.

He and his siblings converged on the clearing. One of his sisters dive bombed one of the guards and snatched his wand from his hand. The other guard fired stunning spells at the shapes flying through the air and took down Ed and two other Hermes kids.

The Ravenclaw guard, who had lost his wand, drew his sword and engaged Travis and Connor Stoll in battle. He held his own quite well for a non-demigod who had only been using a sword for three weeks. His Hufflepuff friend fired spells at any movement he caught sight of in the darkness. When both of their backs were to the flag a blur burst out of the trees, leapt to the top of the rock, snatched up the flag and sprinted away with it.

The blur dodged and weaved through spell fire and around battles until it reached the creek. With one leap it was across and Leila, who was up a tree right above where it stopped, grinned.

The unnatural night faded away. Akio dropped the flag, which now showed Apollo’s lyre in place of the Hogwarts crest, and smiled a wolfy smile.

“Is that allowed?” Professor Hooch asked, squinting at the projection of the game that was being shown on the roof of the dining pavilion.

The video roof was another of Annabeth’s additions.

“There is no rule against it,” Chiron said slowly.

“Victory to Camp Half-Blood!” Chiron’s voice echoed through the woods.

Birds took flight to escape the cheers.


	28. Leila XXVIII

“I still can’t believe we lost to a wolf,” Daphne complained.

Said wolf looked up at her from the grass floor of the Persephone cabin and blinked slowly.

Leila stopped pacing and sat down next to him. “If it weren’t for Akio we would have tied,” she reminded her girlfriend.

“That makes it worse,” Daphne said.

Leila scratched Akio behind the ears. “Maybe, maybe not.” 

From what she had heard from other campers, the Hermes kids had gotten destroyed by the wizards guarding the flag and Nico hadn’t been anywhere near them. The one wizard that made it past the creek, Neville Longbottom, had been turned into a pig by Lou Ellen once he’d found their flag. If Akio hadn’t gotten the wizard’s flag the game would have been the first Camp Half-Blood Capture the Flag tie in a hundred years.

That would have been highly embarrassing.

From across the room, Sapphire said, “Green.”

“Purple,” Lacy countered.

Sapphire shook her head. “I refuse to have a purple wedding.”

They had been arguing about the wedding’s colour scheme for the past half hour. Sapphire had rejected pink right away, of course, and Lacy wouldn't even allow her to think of using black. Leila had started pacing about fifteen minutes in.

“Purple is your colour,” Lacy said, affronted.

“You need a sibling who spends time on the internet,” Sapphire said. “Game of Thrones, purple wedding, not a good thing.” 

“If the colour scheme is green and your dress is red it’ll look like a Christmas tree,” Leila said helpfully.

The bell at the entrance to the cabin chimed.

“Ed’s here,” Rosalind said tiredly from one of the upper hammocks. “I’m letting him in.”

Well, something was wearing on her. It was probably nearly getting set on fire two days in a row. Don't ask.

“What if the dress isn’t red?” Ed asked as he walked through the door Rosalind formed in the wall of vines.

Leila looked up at Daphne, who was swinging on the hammock she was sitting on. “Were they really that loud?”

Daphne frowned. “Maybe? My cabin’s noisy all the time so I don’t think I can tell anymore.”

Sapphire and Ed did that thing where they had an entire conversation just by looking at each other. “Gold,” they said in unison.

Leila had a very slim idea of how they had come up with that. It had to do with a nursery rhyme, or maybe a book.

“Okay, so your dress is now gold.” Lacy erased something from the giant wedding book she had created and wrote something new. “Oh! We could make it out of chain mail!”

That wasn't weird, really. They were demigods. Annabeth had gotten married in armour.

Lacy bent her head over the book and starting scribbling away. Leila knew she wouldn’t come up for air at least until archery practice.

“So, I’ll talk to Leo about the colour theme,” Sapphire muttered. “What are your plans for the year?” she asked Daphne.

Daphne shrugged. “Dunbar and I have been talking. We think that we should stick together but we haven’t decided if we’re going to stay at camp or go to Ilvermorny or one of the smaller schools. And Astoria and Blaise want me to go back to Britain with them. ”

“Even though you’re not a pureblood anymore?” Sapphire exclaimed. “Astoria I can understand, but Blaise…” She shook her head.

Daphne smirked. “He’s come round.”

For some reason that didn’t involve being thrown into the canoe lake with Lou Ellen, Leila was sure. Aphrodite had to be having so much fun, first Astoria Greengrass and a Gryffindor and now Blaise Zabini and a demigod. 

“Better decide _soon_ ,” Rosalind said. “Summer’s _almost_ over.”

Every demigod in the cabin sighed, except for Lacy. Akio whimpered sadly.

“It’s been a good summer,” Sapphire said.

“You would say that,” Ed teased.

Sapphire smiled and looked down at her engagement ring.

“It _has_ been a good summer,” Leila agreed. “Better than expected.”

Her eyes drifted over to Daphne, who was engaging Akio in a staring contest. Yes, much better than expected.

* * *

Hearing whispers coming from the weapons shed was nothing unusual. Some couples met up there, like Jamie from the Tyche cabin and Alex from the Morpheus cabin (according to Lacy’s gossip anyway), and there were always a few campers banding together to find weapons. Leila would have walked right on by if she hadn’t heard Dumbledore being mentioned.

She went over to the window of the shed and peeked inside. Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, and Harry Potter were standing in the centre of the shed. Hermione was pacing back and forth, just narrowly missing knocking over a crate of knives. Leila couldn’t hear everything they were saying, there was this thing called a wall in between them, but her lip-reading was pretty good.

“Let me make this clear,” Hermione told the boys, “we failed.”

“We’ve still got a few days left Hermione, relax,” Ron said.

Hermione did not relax. “We had one job! _Dumbledore_ gave us one job!”

“You’ve said that already,” Ron commented.

Hermione sighed. “We’re never going to get them to fight with us.”

“It’s not their war, Hermione,” Harry said. “How would you like it if they had come to Hogwarts and tried to get us to fight in the Giant War?”

“That’s different,” Hermione insisted.

No, it really wasn’t.

“How many Death Eaters do you know who can sword fight?” Ron said, taking one of the swords off the wall and swinging it around.

Leila told herself that she would intervene if it started looking like he might end up cutting someone’s head off, Celestial bronze or not. How they hadn’t noticed her there yet she did not know, she had practically her whole head in the middle of the window.

“They have been helping us, Hermione,” Harry pointed out. “Like Ron said, how many Death Eaters can sword fight? We have an advantage now.”

“But Dumbledore—”

“Isn’t going to make seven-year-olds fight Death Eaters,” Harry said firmly. “Would you please just let it go and enjoy the time we have left here?”

Hermione opened and closed her mouth several times before giving a small smile. “Alright Harry. You’re right. I do want to get to the top of the climbing wall…”

Hermione Granger, thrill-seeker, who would have thought?

Leila crept away from the weapons shed and then ran all the way back to the cabins. She had some very good news to tell the other head counselors. 


	29. Wizards XXIX

The guest house was being hit by a tornado.

Professor McGonagall was the only one trying to keep everything under some semblance of control, and she was failing. Badly.

People were running all over the place. Neville was turning the common room upside down looking for a book that he knew he’d brought. Luna, Ginny, and three other fourth year girls were trying to figure out which of them owned what clothes that were scattered all over their room. A seventh-year was running back and forth between his room and the common room for some unknown reason. Trunks were being slammed shut and thrown open as their owners found possessions they had been missing. Everywhere there was noise and chaos.

It was worse than packing up at the end of the school year, and it had only been one month.

“Uh, Harry?” Ron asked.

Harry looked up from his packed trunk. He blinked when he saw the knife Ron was holding between two fingers.

“Is this yours?” Ron wanted to know.

Harry shook his head. “Is it Celestial bronze?”

“I think so.”

Harry took the knife and tried (and failed) to cut his palm with it. “It must be Nico’s. I’ll take it to him. I’m done packing anyway.”

Ron nodded. “Alright, mate. I’d better finish up.” Ron’s truck was open and spilling stuff all over the floor. He wasn’t even close to done packing.

Harry carefully navigated the storm and made it out of the guest house without a scratch. Outside he ran into Sirius, who was doing his best to avoid the whole mess without abandoning the guest house for the climbing wall.

“Finished packing, Harry?” Sirius asked.

“Yup.” Harry held up the Celestial bronze knife. “I’m going to return this to Nico before we leave.”

“I’ll come with you,” Sirius said quickly. “I’ve almost gotten hit by flying shoes twice already, and they weren’t the kind with wings.”

They started walking towards the cabins. It was late in the day. Most of the demigods had free time. There was a group of boys playing a game of basketball. They called for Harry to join them, the surprise discovery having been made last week that Harry was an awesome basketball player, but Harry shook his head.

“Maybe later,” he shouted. The boys nodded and gave thumbs up before going back to their game.

“Sirius,” Harry asked, “you are going to be coming back with us, right?”

It was something that hadn’t been confirmed yet. All of the wizards that had come to Camp Half-Blood knew that Sirius wasn’t dead, but that didn’t mean that the rest of the wizarding world would believe them. Maybe they’d think that it was just someone pretending to be Sirius. And there was always the chance that Minister Fudge would decide that Sirius was still a mass murderer and re-enact the Kiss on Sight order.

He was in Lucius Malfoy’s pocket after all.

“Of course I’m coming back!” Sirius said. “I’m a free man, and if anyone disagrees I’ll hex them.”

Harry laughed, picturing Sirius making Fudge tap dance and Lucius Malfoy turn into a ferret.

“And, since I am I free man, there’s nothing stopping you from coming to live with me,” Sirius declared.

Harry stopped walking right next to Hestia’s fire. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” Sirius grinned. “Did you think I wasn’t serious? Not at my family’s home of course, but we’ll find a place, somewhere in the country where you’ll be able to go flying.”

“That’d be brilliant,” Harry exclaimed. “But…will Dumbledore let us?”

“He’d better!” a girl said.

Harry and Sirius turned and saw Hestia standing beside her fire with her hands on her hips and a determined look on her nine year old face.

Harry bowed. “Lady Hestia.”

“You do not bow to me, Harry Potter,” Hestia said. “You and Sirius will stay together, you are a family. If Albus even _thinks_ of stopping you, he and I will have words.”

The fire of her eyes grew brighter. Harry was sure that her having words with Dumbledore would not be pleasant for the Headmaster, not matter how kind the goddess normally was.

“Thank you, Lady Hestia,” Sirius choked out.

Hestia smiled warmly. “You’re welcome, Sirius.”

The goddess disappeared and the fire flared, signalling the end of their conversation. Harry and Sirius finished walking across the green and Harry knocked on the door of the Hades cabin.

“Hang on,” Nico called from inside.

After a few seconds, Nico opened the door, pushing his hair out of his face. “Hey, Harry. Hi, Sirius.”

“Hi, Nico.” Harry held up the knife. “I just wanted to give this back.”

Nico took the knife with a look of relief. “Thanks, I’ve been looking for this.” He tapped the hilt and the knife shrunk into a ring that he slid onto his left pinky. “My stepmother gave it to me and I don’t want to make her mad again.”

That would be bad. Harry had heard the dandelion story.

Nico looked at Harry and Sirius. “Do you want to come in?”

“If you’re busy,” Harry started.

Nico shook his head. “Like I said, I was looking for my knife. Jay’s chaperoning Sapphire and Leo’s date, so I’m on my own.”

Harry looked at Sirius, who didn’t show any objection. “Sure.”

“So,” Nico asked once they were inside and seated comfortably on the couch in front of the fireplace, “how’d you like camp?”

“It has been fantastic,” Harry said with a grin. “I know why Dunbar and Greengrass don’t want to leave. I’d stay here forever if I could.”

“It is home,” Nico murmured. “Chiron wants us to be able to live in the mortal world though.”

“Chiron is very wise,” Sirius said.

“He is several millennia old,” Harry pointed out.

“Lily would agree with him,” Sriuis said. “That’s all that matters.”

Thunder rumbled faintly above them.

“Anyway,” Nico said quickly, “I’d say we’d be glad to have you back, but, to be honest, we couldn’t handle another summer like this one.”

“Our professors probably couldn’t either,” Harry agreed.

McGonagall had been complaining about the inevitable rush to prepare for next school year that was going to happen since their trans-ocean train had left King’s Cross.

“I’m kind of surprised Professor Dumbledore didn’t come,” Nico commented. “It would have been a good chance to gather allies for your war. The amount of wizards and other magic folk in New York alone, I mean, everything is in New York.”

Harry swallowed uncomfortably. Of course, Nico noticed. “Harry? Something wrong?”

“Dumbledore wanted me, Ron and Hermione to convince you to fight Voldemort with us,” Harry blurted out.

Sirius grimaced. He and Harry both waited for the son of Hades to kill them.

“I know,” Nico said.

Harry blinked. “What?”

“I know,” Nico repeated. “Actually, everyone here knows.”

“How?” Sirius asked.

Nico nodded to Harry. “I was eavesdropping on your conversation.”

Harry wasn’t sure whether to be angry or relieved. Eventually he decided to go with relieved. “You mean you all already knew that we were going to try to get you to fight? And you still let us come here?”

Nico nodded. “We all knew we weren’t going to fight, and people wanted to meet you and your friends. Your ookbs and oiemvs are really popular.”

Harry made a face. “Our what?”

Nico shook his head. “Never mind, the Mist scrambles that. It’s not important for you.”

“Oh,” Harry said, still not understanding. “You’re not mad at us for listening to Dumbledore?”

“He’s Dumbledore,” Nico said flatly.

“That’s very true,” Sirius said with a nod.

Nico got up and went to take something out of a black and orange jar on the fireplace’s mantelpiece. He threw it towards Harry, who quickly caught it.

“You know how to Iris Message?” Nico asked. “Make a rainbow and all that?”

Harry nodded, turning the gold drachma over in his hand.

“I’m not going to fight because Dumbledore told me to,” Nico said firmly. “If _you_ need my help, you call me, got it?”

“Got it.” Harry found himself smiling. “Thank you, Nico.”

Nico sat back down and smiled back. “Hey, I don’t have many friends. I’d hate to have one die on me.”


	30. Sapphire XXX

The goodbyes were more emotional than Sapphire, or any of the demigods, expected they would be.

Lou Ellen sent Blaise Zabini off with a kiss and one of her many earrings adorning his left earlobe. Malcom and a Ravenclaw boy were among many demigod/wizard pairs who exchanged addresses so that they could try to write to each other during the year, though the owls crossing the ocean problem hadn’t been addressed. Nico went to shake Harry’s hand but ended up giving him a bro hug. Sapphire herself was the recipient of a rib-cracking hug from Luna Lovegood that she did not see coming from an inch away.

Daphne and her sister were the only ones expected to share an emotional goodbye, which they did. If they hadn’t, Sapphire would probably have passed out.

“Safe travels,” Chiron said to the professors, “and good hunting.”

Professor McGonagall inclined her head respectfully. If she was even the slightest bit confused by Chiron’s foreshadowing she hid it well, a lot better than every other wizard there. “Thank you, Chiron.”

There was a scramble to make sure that everyone had a Portkey, and then they were gone without even a toe left behind.

That was a good thing.

“Well,” Leo said, “that was a thing.”

Sapphire nodded. “Do you think we’ll hear from them again?”

“Daphne and Fay are living at Camp this year,” Lacy reminded her. “We’re bound to hear something.”

The send-off broke up quickly. There were several demigods, mostly Hermes’s kids, who were planning to leave camp for the year but had put off packing until the last minute and now had to rush to fill their bags before the harpies came to eat them.

Sapphire had already finished packing. She said her own goodbyes and then she and Leo headed out to the canoe lake with Jay in tow, planning to spend time together until Sapphire and Jay absolutely had to leave. They sat at the end of the dock, watching the naiads weave elaborate baskets.

“So,” Sapphire asked, “March?”

“I thought we’d decided that you’re deciding on the music,” Leo said.

Sapphire elbowed him with a smile. “Not what I meant, Fire Boy, and you know it.”

Leo grinned. “Only if your parents are okay with it. I never want to do anything to get on their bad side. Asking them to let us get married was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Which parents are you talking about?” Sapphire teased.

“All of them!”

They both laughed. Jay purred from his patch of sunlight.

“Are you sure you want me to meet more of your family?” Leo asked once Sapphire had stopped giggling. “I mean, Christmas is one thing but spending a whole week with them…”

“It will be fine,” Sapphire said firmly.

They were both good at playing down their demigodishness, and it wasn’t like her family was normal anyway. 

“We’ve got the Mist and four other people to cover for us,” she added. “And it’s not like my cousin’s a werewolf or anything… I think.”

Sapphire and Leo looked at each other.

“That could be a problem,” Leo said.

“I’m pretty sure my family is human,” Sapphire protested, “though it is debatable with Great-aunt Elfreda.”

“That’s the one that’s like my Aunt Rosa, right?”

Sapphire nodded. “Yup.”

“Neither of them are invited to our wedding,” Leo decided.

“Agreement.”

Jay meowed and stood up, stretching. _‘Time to get going.’_

Sapphire gave Leo a kiss. “Jay’s right, we’ve gotta go.”

Leo sighed. “I wish you could stay during the year.”

“You just said you don’t want to make my parents mad,” Sapphire giggled. “I’ve got classes to catch up on. I’m going to have to stay an extra semester as it is.”

It turned out that mortal schools didn’t give credit for classes taken at schools of magic. Go figure. And here Sapphire thought that at least Herbology could stand in for biology. So she and Amber wouldn’t be graduating together, but at least she and Ed would get extra time to prepare for the SAT and the DSTOMP to get into New Rome University.

The music and poetry analysis sections on the Demigod Standard Test of Mad Powers were supposed to be killer.

Leo and Sapphire walked to the Hades cabin hand in hand. Nico, Ed, and Mike were waiting there.

“Shouldn’t you be headed home already?” Leo asked Mike. “North Carolina is a long way by pegasus.”

Mike grimaced. “I really tried, but there was an, uh, _incident_ with my stepmother’s family on Boxing Day. I’m staying here until it blows over.”

Leo frowned. “Sucks, man.”

“So, we ready to go?” Sapphire asked Ed after an appropriate amount of silence.

“We’ve got about five minutes until the harpies come to eat us,” Ed said.

“That’s a yes,” Sapphire translated. She shouldered her bag and held out her hand to Ed.

“I hate shadow travel,” Ed muttered.

He took her hand and grasped it so hard that her fingers started to go numb. Jay put both of his front paws on Sapphire’s foot.

Sapphire smiled. “Bye, see you at Christmas.”

“Bye,” Nico said.

“IM us,” Mike told them. 

Leo looked at Sapphire. “I love you,” he said.

Sapphire’s smiled widened. “Love you too.”

Shadows flowed around them, and then they were gone.

“I’ll be at Camp Jupiter,” Nico said before he too disappeared into the shadow of the cabin.

Leo and Mike looked at each other.

“Forges?” Mike suggested. “I’ve got an idea for making weapons we could use against werewolves and regular monsters.”

“You had me at forges,” Leo said. “Lead on, good sir.”

They headed for the forges, pegasi and mechanical dragonlings flying overhead. The sounds of satyrs playing their pipes in the strawberry fields and the remaining Apollo kids practising in their cabin drifted through the air. On Half-Blood Hill, Hermes’s kids scrambled to cross the border, harpies nipping at their heels. The portal between Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter lit up, ready for the traffic flow between the camps to start back up.

Leo fingered the newest bead on his necklace, blue with two linked rings for Percy and Annabeth’s wedding.

Summer was over.

* * *

FINIS


End file.
